Although I studied art history, I had never heard of Hiram Powers. At that time, when I looked up his work, I found only a paragraph and a grainy photograph. He wasn't in the text books I studied.

At that time I would not have believed that there exists a concerted effort to remove the work of some artists from history and to clandestinely hunt and torture artists and their descendants.

Recently I looked up Hiram Powers on the Internet. On the web sites of the Newark Museum and the Smithsonian and on the Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture web site hosted by the University of Virginia, I found photographs of his sculpture: The Greek Slave.

Made in the mid-19th century in the decades before the Civil War, in its depiction of the terrible intrusion of captivity and slavery on the human soul, this white marble work is still extraordinarily effective.

On the woman's arms, Powers used chains like those used on African American slaves.

I found a 19th century photograph of crowds of people viewing The Greek Slave. The nude sculpture sits exposed on a pedestal, as if she were a flesh and blood slave at a real auction. To me it was a metaphor for a technology-mediated intrusion on the human mind in which a living person's innermost thoughts are publicly broadcast -- the curious crowd oblivious to the inhumane and terrible act of voyeurism in which they are participating.

Hiram Powers was a Swedenborgian, who sought to sculpt the spiritual.

My leg always hurts. It is full of metal. My foot often feels numb. When I walk without crutches or cane, I feel as if I'm dragging shackles. That for years I had to walk with crutches, attached to my arms like the chains on the Greek slave's arms, seems a metaphor for a viscous system of persecution.

As did Hiram Powers, I seek to call attention to those who do not respect the human spirit.

The narrator's name is Cassie. It is my hope that her words will be believed; her country freed; her own freedom and happiness found in the lands that she loves.