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About
the Collection
Biography
of Walter Pantovic
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Walter Pantovic |
Walter Pantovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1965. At the age of
two he immigrated to the United States with his family and settled
in Detroit, Michigan. He spent his formative years in Detroit, completed
his primary and secondary education there, and graduated from Hamtramck
High School. An important influence on him in Detroit was that he
had the opportunity to study black history in elementary school.
Despite this important introduction to black history, courses in
black history were not available to him in middle and high school.
Nevertheless, he continued to study black history on his own.
In
1985 he moved to the New York - New Jersey area and opened an environmental
contracting firm, called All City Environmental. His firm removes
asbestos and lead paint, and does environmental testing, demolition,
insulation and fireproofing.
Having
an interest in black history since his formative years, he began
collecting artifacts and antiques related to the subject. He was
especially interested in artifacts and antiques related to slavery
and the Civil War and has acquired an important and valuable collection
of items from those periods. He has assembled an impressive collection
of shackles, slave tags, photographs,
period newspapers, manillas, bills of sale
and authentic items that tell the true story of American slavery.
The items in his collection alone belie the alleged "kindness" and
"mildness" said to have characterized American slavery.
Pantovic's
motivation for collecting such items that many attempt to disassociate
from the "American" experience is described best in his own words:
"I believe that it is a part of history that has been long enough
ignored, we cannot continue to sweep atrocities like this into the
past. It is better to educate our young people about our past mistakes
so that they will not be repeated. "
Collection
Description
The
Collection
consists of over 300 items related to the history of American slavery.
All of the items are authentic and show that slavery was not the
benign and kind institution as its defenders have tried to portray
it. For example, within the collection there are various examples
of bondage devices like leg and wrist shackles and a neck collar.
The Collection also indicates that American slavery was a cold,
inhumane business because it includes a 1746 ship's document listing
the cost of "a negro at 170" pound sterling as well as several bills
of sale. The Pantovic Collection also includes items like 19th century
newspaper articles about slavery, a
slave-made chair, and 19th
century daguerreotypes of enslaved African Americans. This
is a one-of-a-kind collection, and many of the documents and artifacts
that it contains are scheduled to be in the Old Slave Mart Museum
in Charleston, South Carolina.
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