Showing posts with label Jim Crow laws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Crow laws. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Truevine: Two Brothers, A Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South

Truevine is the remarkable story of George and Willie Muse, born to a sharecropper in a part of the country that had hardly changed since slave days. And they were born albino African Americans, with white skin, pale hair in dreadlocks, and blue eyes unable to focus or stand light. The boys faced a brutal life in the tobacco fields of Virginia.

The brothers were six and nine when they were stolen from their home in Truvine to be exhibited in circuses, told their mother was dead. Called Eko and Iko, Ambassadors from Mars, or the Sheep-headed freaks, or touted as cannibals, they performed across America and in Europe. Uneducated, told to talk in mumbo jumbo and to act wild, they also learned any instrument by ear and loved to sing It's a Long Way to Tipperary.

Their heartbroken mother spent twenty-eight years trying to reunite with her sons.

When the circus arrived in the brother's home town their mother was in the audience and was recognized by her sons She went to court to seek justice for her sons: remuneration, better living conditions, correspondence with their family, a retirement savings account. Her sons, after all, were one of the biggest draws in the sideshow.

In Roanoke, VA, African Americans lynch mobs dealt out 'justice' and the descendants of slaves were considered genetically inferior. The Muse brother's mother took on one of the biggest entertainment businesses in a courageous act that could have brought fatal repercussions.

Not that the battle was fought once and for all. The boys contracted to return to the circus, this time with a salary. But they were handed off to a new manager who took off for another venue and kept all the proceeds for himself. The brothers spent 28 years exploited, in virtual slavery.

I was reluctant to read a book about 'freaks' until I saw the reviews. Macy considers the Muse brothers' story in context of African American history from slavery through Jim Crow laws, the eugenics movement the early 20th c., and cultural and political changes including urban renewal.

The author spent 25 years building a relationship with the woman who cared for the last Muse brother in old age. Truevine is impressive in it's scope, exploring human trafficking, the heyday of the circus, the racial history of Roanoke, VA, and offers sympathetic, human portraits of the Muse family.

There is question about how the brothers came to be discovered by the circus and if the circus life was better than the lives they would have had, especially as they developed blindness. What is not under question is the love and respect given the aging Willie who lived to be 108; his tombstone reads, "God is good to me."

As I read this book I remembered the elementary school boy with a hook for a hand. And I realized the white haired, white skinned boy with dark glasses in my high school had albinism. Differences were something I took in stride growing up, for as my mother used to say, in another day and economic status, she would have been a circus freak.

Mom suffered from psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. At times 90% of her body was covered by psoriasis. Her nails were thick, yellow, and bumpy. She took long soaking baths and applied creams to loosen the dead skin, leaving her with red patches of new skin. Arthritis too mobility in her neck, hands, and major joints. Her treatments included mercury salves, cortisone that caused weight gain and thin skin that easy tore open, application of smelly tar ointments followed by body wrapping in saran wrap, applications of olive oil on her scalp (which I helped apply with cotton balls), Ultra Violet light treatment that caused pre-cancerous growths, and finally Methotrexate which allowed her a quality of life she had not experienced in decades.

Mom figured she would have been touted as a scaly Fish Lady.

To me, Mom was pretty, smart, and generous, a loyal friend, an incessant reader. Yes, she needed help with her personal care, and had trouble opening jars or lifting heavy things. But I was not ashamed of her, as she feared, nor did I feel the need to explain or hide Mom's autoimmune disease.

The Muse brothers didn't have what Mom enjoyed: a loving mother and father who provided for their children, a loving husband, a community that supported her, affordable medical care. The Muse brothers did have a mother who never gave up wanting the best for her sons.

"One of my advisers, a sociology professor, says that black people really want people to know that they have survived something – emotionally, physically, spiritually – that would have killed most people," Macy says. "That's the heart of this book." http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2016/1027/Truevine-untangles-a-tale-of-exploitation-and-grace
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



Truevine: Two Brothers, A Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
Beth Macy
Little, Brown & Company
$28 hard cover
ISBN 9780316337540











Thursday, July 7, 2016

"What's important is the past": Absalom's Daughters by Suzanne Feldman

In the Jim Crow South of the 1950s two girls find their reflection in each other's faces. Although one is black and one white they share the same father-- 'skirt-chasing, adulteratin' white trash'--who has abandoned both families. A rumor comes to town that their father is to inherit a legacy, and being 'progeny' the girls are encouraged to find their father and demand their inheritance.

Sixteen-year-old Judith is white, uneducated, and devastatingly poor. What she possesses is a beautiful talent for singing. Hearing the Negro music aired from New York City--only at night due to its scandalous sexuality--Judith longs to go to New York and become a famous singer.

Cassie, fifteen and cinnamon in color, lives with her grandmother and mother, a hardworking laundress. Grandmother determined that her daughter--and plans for her granddaughter--to take white lovers with the expectation of diluting their African blood until they can pass as white. Cassie's mother hopes to spare her daughter this indignation, encouraging her to follow Judith's quest for the father and leave town.

The story of the girls' road trip across the south is delightful reading, episodic with wonderful characters and twists and memorable characters.

Early in the story Cassie meets Ovid Beale who tells her that mules 'useter be colored folk'; it is easier for colored folk to turn into a mule because they are 'already half one thing and half another.' And it is this theme of passing between two worlds, the legacy of slavery making colored folks black but not black, appearing white while being deemed legally black, that informs the story.

On their travels each sister acts out different roles according to the expectations of the audience and what they need to do to survive. Cassie acts the black servant to Judith, then tries passing as white, learning about herself and deciding on her future. Cassie learns that what is important is the past, to never forget her roots.

It took time for me to get hooked to the story, then it picked up considerably. The characters are interesting and Feldman has an original take on the timeless theme of race and identity in America.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Absalom's Daughters
by Suzanne Feldman
Henry Holt & Co,
Publication July 5, 2016
$26 hard cover
ISBN: 9781627794534

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial justice in the Nation's Capital

"Besides, you ain't going North, not the real North. You going to Washington. It's just another southern town." Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

In 1950, five years before Rosa Parks remained seated on a bus, a party of four meet at Thompson's Restaurant in Washington, D.C. The group included  ninety-year-old Mary Church Terrell. Mary wanted to challenge the legality of segregation in the nation's capital, a tricky legal question for a city that in 1874 lost the right to elect their own governance or congressional representation. Anti-discrimination laws had not been enforced in D.C., which was "just another Southern town" under Jim Crow segregation. At an age when most men and women were content to pass the baton to younger hands, Mary took a stand for justice.

Mary was born in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, the daughter of former slaves. She had known Fredrick Douglas and died the year of Brown vs. Board of Education, her ninety years spanning Reconstruction to segregation and lynchings to activism and the legal dismantling of segregation. A college graduate, young Mary longed to make a difference. Harvard law graduate Robert H. Terrell pressured her to marry and she finally gave her hand. Mary underwent miscarriages, raised a daughter, and ran the household while juggling a career as a public speaker, reformer, and writer.

Just Another Southern Town by Joan Quigly is a biography of a woman torn between the demands of family and her desire to change the world. It is also the story of race relations in America and in our capital city, a detailed history of the legal battle of the District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co, Inc. which in 1953 ended the segregation of restaurants.

I enjoyed learning more about Mary Church Terrell. She was elegant and well dressed, with a "flair for self-promotion." Her marriage was based on intellectual equality, but she and Robert differed in all other ways, including politically. Robert was a joiner, an extrovert, and his government position as the first black American judge required avoiding controversy. Robert was friends with Booker T. Washington; Mary was friends with W. E. DuBois and became radicalized in her older years.

Quigley sets Mary's life in context of her times and highlights her role in the long march towards social equality and justice. The court cases could have been deadly reading in less capable hands. I am glad to have learned more about Mary and about this part of the history of Civil Rights.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Mary Church Terrell on my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet


Just Another Southern Town
by Joan Quigley
Oxford University Press
$29.95 hard cover
Publication Date: February 1, 2016
ISBN:9780199371518



Friday, October 31, 2014

Healing Quiltmaking and Jim Crow Segretation: "The Colored Car" by Jean Alicia Elster

Last weekend we visited Leon & Lulu's wonderful home decor store for their annual Books & Author's fair. We visited with 18 Metro Detroit writers of all ages and genres. 10% of the proceeds from book sales went to the Oakland County Literacy Council so of course we had to buy some books.

One of the books I found was Jean Alicia Elster's "The Colored Car" based on her own grandmother's experiences growing up in Detroit and traveling from Detroit to Tennessee in 1922. Ms Elster garnered stories and recipes from her grandmother.

The Ford family lives in Detroit where Douglas runs a saw mill and his wife May uses her home economics education to put up food, sew clothes, and run the household. Several family recipes are included in the text. They live in a working class neighborhood of immigrants. May grew up in Tennessee and has not been back in nine years. There had been a terrible flood in her hometown and May decides it is time to go home and see her family again. She decides to bring her young daughters along.

Her eldest daughter Patsy is 12 years old, just taking over her brother's family chores now he is helping in his dad's business. The train trip seems a big adventure. Her mother has sewn new clothes for the girls, and they wear white gloves for traveling. They sit in upholstered seats and are served delicate sandwiches. But in Cincinnati they must change trains to ride in the "colored car". It has no cushioned seats and a stove spews out smoke. Patsy resists getting on. She had never encountered the Jim Crow laws of the south before.

How Patsy deals with her collision with a new reality is the focus of the second half of the book. Her grandmother gives her fabric to start her first quilt, a Fence Rail quilt. She tells her granddaughter that she is to put all her pain into the quilt. When the quilt is completed she will be free of the bad memories.

Patsy has been profoundly disturbed by her experience. The family faces another crisis but things turns out okay. There is drama in the book, but nothing to give a child nightmares. Ms Elster explores serious issues in context of a charming family's life.

As I was talking to the author I learned that quiltmaking played a role in the book. How cool was that? She was not a quiltmaker herself, but her family had many.

To make the Fence Rail quilt Patsy's grandmother gave her fabric to cut into 1 1/2" x 6 1/2" pieces. Patsy was given a brass thimble and shown how to use a running stitch to sew the quilt. Once the blocks were made she set them together and quilted the with a running stitch. What happens to the quilt? Read the book and find out!

For an interview with the author visit SORMAG"S Blog.

As Ms Elster notes in the forward to her book, the history of civil rights can be traced through lawsuits against the railroads. One early crusader was the formidable journalist and activist Ida B. Wells who appears on my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet. Like Patsy, Ida resisted being sent to "the colored car" and started a campaign. Read more about her here:
http://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-9527635#later-career
http://people.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html


On a personal note, my mother told me of her first train ride from Kane, PA to Albany, NY to see her grandparents. Mom was only five and had never seen a person of color before and the porters were African American. She asked my grandmother, "Why is that man brown?" My grandmother wanted to end the discussion and told her "Because he is made of chocolate." Well, my mom went up and bit the man on the hand! It was quite a shock to all involved.

Perhaps biting that poor porter taught Mom that we all have the same color blood; we all feel the same pain.

Americans carry a heavy legacy.

The Colored Car
Jean Alicia Elster
Wayne State University Press
ISBN-13:978081336069
$14.95