I chose this illustration for the dramatic implications of this face-to-face meeting between "Mark Twain" and an African American. The black in the picture is not a slave, though he might have been born one . The picture shows "MT" on his return to the Mississippi at St. Louis in 1882, to gather impressions for a travel book. Only one steamboat is tied up at the waterfront, with a "colored boy on watch here--nobody else visible." The young man tells MT that the boat would sail whenever she got her cargo.
The Barrett Collection, UVA PS1314_A1_1883c