| Glass items indicate the family used mass-produced goods, particularly the large quantities of brand name items such as Listerine, Noxema, Lysol, Dill’s Flavoring Extracts, Pepsi Cola and other sodas, and Carter’s ink bottles. Archeologists also identified a number of home food storage and preservation vessels. Practicing home food preservation may have been part of this farming family’s lifestyle and allowed them to be more self sufficient. Studying these artifacts reveals that the Robinson family strove for American civil and material opportunities like their white counterparts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereas previous generations of African-American families had limited access to the consumer marketplace due to slavery and economic privation. |
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