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For nearly 200 years, David Drake’s voice and legacy have survived in clay.
Known as “Dave the Potter,” Drake was an enslaved Black ceramicist in South Carolina whose handmade vessels carried his name, poetry and quiet defiance through a system designed to erase him. Today, his prized jars sit in museums and private collections across the country–owned, admired and sold by others.
But his descendants are asking if the world can own Dave’s art, then why can’t his family?
That question drives a historic restitution campaign as Drake’s descendants, alongside attorney George Fatheree, work to reclaim their ancestor’s creations–and ensure his legacy remains accessible to the public.
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“When does it end? He was enslaved, and now the pots he created are still, in a sense, enslaved,” Yaba Baker, Drake’s fourth-generation grandson, author and spokesman for the Dave the Potter Legacy Trust, told us in an exclusive interview. “The one thing that we clearly understand is that these are assets that get passed down to people’s families. They’re artwork, but they’re also assets.”
For him, the fight is deeply personal– and increasingly urgent. Several generations of Drake’s descendants are still alive, but for elders in their 80s, time is limited.
“At what point do we decide to do the right thing and put his creations back in the hands of his descendants?”
Baker’s family did not always know it was connected to Drake. A genealogist traced Drake’s lineage and contacted Baker’s aunt, revealing a family history they could never have imagined.
“We didn’t have the connections to Dave because of the lack of records,” Baker explained. The discovery forced the family to confront the painful contradiction at the heart of Drake’s legacy: He created art that would outlive slavery, yet he was never allowed to own the work his hands created.
Drake carved his name and poetry into more than 40,000 creations. His words challenged the system that tried to erase him, preserving his voice across generations.
“We saw the situation with him as an artist and how revered he is and the type of things he made… but also the human being trapped in slavery where you don’t get a chance to see your kids,” Baker pointed out. “You don’t get a chance to experience vacations or a chance to really enjoy life.”
Only 250 of Drake’s works still exist, according to the Washington Post. Around 40 to 60 are located at museums, while the rest are likely in the hands of private collectors. The family already recovered seven of Drake’s jars, which attorney Fatheree told us is beyond historic… although the process did not come without its challenges.
“This had never been done before,” the attorney emphasized. Until the Drake family, no American museum had previously returned artwork created by an enslaved Black person. Unlike cases involving Nazi-looted art or Indigenous cultural artifacts– both of which have legal protections on the federal and state levels– there was no established legal path for restitution of art created by enslaved Americans.
“There was no precedent, there was no playbook,” Fatheree said. “So we had to create one.”
Instead of simply asking museums to hand over Drake’s work and close the doors behind them, the descendants have encouraged institutions to return Drake’s jars to the family and then purchase them back, allowing museums to become legitimate owners while the family becomes a beneficiary of its ancestor’s legacy.
“It was very important to the family that Mr. Drake’s artwork remain accessible to the public,” Fatheree said. “And so the approach that we’ve developed is we are inviting museums to return the artwork to the family.”
The campaign is ultimately about more than one man or one family. Drake’s story is a window into the broader legacy of slavery–and the millions of Black Americans whose contributions were never properly recognized, recorded or ever returned to them.
So far, Drake’s jars have been recovered from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Telfair Museums, the Georgia Museum of Art, private collectors and artist Theaster Gates.
The family is also in discussions with other major institutions. But while the fight for justice seems to be moving slowly, Baker said patience is key to securing victories for Drake and other descendants of slavery who are often written out of history.
“Black America shares a shared trauma, which is slavery but also the remnants of slavery,” Baker told us. “A win like this is a win for all of us because we know all our ancestors put in the kind of work to build the foundation of this country.”
And perhaps that is why the family is determined to see Drake’s voice continue to be heard.
“There are a lot of heroes who were unsung who helped us get to this point. And I think Dave was one of those people who had a voice that was trying to be squashed, but he found a way to make his voice heard,” Baker said.
Attorney Fatheree agreed with the sentiment, telling The Root the family’s path towards preserving history will help ensure the proper remedies to confront slavery’s past. “Like David Drake, I’m an optimist,” he said.
