Claudia Strauss-Schulson has been running Schulson Autographs, which sells historical documents like letters signed by presidents or a doodle by Marlon Brando, for around 15 years. Strauss-Schulson, speaking to me from Millburn, New Jersey, tells me she was “flabbergasted” when she got an alert that Google—her site is optimized for the search engine, meaning would-be buyers are shown her products in their results—had flagged a small sketch of a Confederate soldier by the artist Winslow Homer as “dangerous or derogatory content.”
The alert advised: “Update your products to ensure a safe and positive experience for customers,” and went on, “Products that display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance, discrimination, or violence are not allowed.” The note said the breach meant the sketch would be prevented from showing “in all countries,” though the work is still searchable via third parties, like the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.
Strauss-Schulson thinks the small sketch, which reads, “Winslow Homer, New York, March 4, 1869,” was flagged, possibly by a bot, because she labeled it “Winslow Homer Sketch of a Confederate Soldier Signed.” She has not updated her original listing and notes that the sketch is hardly hardcore Confederacy-worshipping propaganda, and far from the most shocking thing for sale online. There isn’t even a Confederate flag in the image.
“To me it looks like a universal soldier who’s looking right at you about the horrors and sadness of war,” says Strauss-Schulson.
Strauss-Schulson has a collection of Homer sketches and drawings that she’s acquired over the years. The nineteenth-century artist was born in Boston and is known for his landscape and maritime scenes. One of his most famous oil paintings, Prisoners from the Front, from 1866, likewise depicts Confederate soldiers captured by a Union general. Homer, at 25, was embedded with Union troops during the war, on assignment with Harper’s Weekly Illustrated. He’d send his drawings to the magazine’s New York office, where engravers translated his work from the field onto wood to be mass printed for the magazine’s 200,000 subscribers.
“These are the documents upon which history gets written. This would be a beautiful thing to have in a high school textbook to illustrate the Civil War,” says Strauss-Schulson, who calls the entire episode “odd.” She adds, “I know what other people sell, and this doesn’t come close.”
Suzy Weiss is a reporter at The Free Press. Read her piece “Fun Is Back,” and follow her on X @SnoozyWeiss.
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I was given a month's suspension from Facebook for posting unacceptable things. The post? A meme posted on D-day with two pictures. On one side Hitler doing his open-handed salute. The other Churchill holding up the peace sign. The caption was "Scissors beats paper".
Thinking my post must have been flagged by a bot, I appealed. My appeal was denied just a few minutes later. Either my post was never seen by a human, or said human was a complete idiot. I tried elevating the issue but that went nowhere. I was given a month-long suspension. I personally gave Facebook a lifetime suspension.
One of Winslow Homer’s most famous paintings depicts a lone black man lying on the deck of a sailboat with a broken mast. The wind and the waves are kicking up, and the boat is surrounded by sharks. The symbolism is obvious. Homer’s sympathy for black Americans is obvious. Winslow Homer is an artist for all Americans to cherish.
If any of the Google coders responsible for Homer’s digital denunciation happen to see these words, know that we see you for what you are. You are small. You don’t understand art. And truth be told, you don’t really like humanity very much, do you?