We’re joined this week by Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, who called from New Orleans to discuss her book Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Mary was born into slavery in Virginia, the child of an enslaved mother and father. Through the remarkable efforts of her father, the entire family was emancipated when Mary was 7 years old. Shortly thereafter, Mary caught the eye of Senator Charles Sumner. Her complexion was light enough for her to pass as white, making her a powerful political symbol for the abolitionist cause. The books details her life and deep ties to the Boston area.
Girl in Black and White
Dr Jessie Morgan-Owens is a professional photographer and dean of Bard Early College in New Orleans. After stumbling across a mention of the famous daguerreotype of Mary Mildred Williams while doing unrelated research in 2006, she spent over 12 years researching Mary’s life and family. The result, Girl in Black and White, attempts to reconstruct the actual life of a little girl who was used by abolitionists for her symbolic value.
If you still need more convincing, here’s how the publisher describes the book:
When a decades-long court battle resulted in her family’s freedom in 1855, seven-year-old Mary Mildred Williams unexpectedly became the face of American slavery. Famous abolitionists Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Albion Andrew would help Mary and her family in freedom, but Senator Charles Sumner saw a monumental political opportunity. Due to generations of sexual violence, Mary’s skin was so light that she “passed” as white, and this fact would make her the key to his white audience’s sympathy. During his sold-out abolitionist lecture series, Sumner paraded Mary in front of rapt audiences as evidence that slavery was not bounded by race.
Weaving together long-overlooked primary sources and arresting images, including the daguerreotype that turned Mary into the poster child of a movement, Jessie Morgan-Owens investigates tangled generations of sexual enslavement and the fraught politics that led Mary to Sumner. She follows Mary’s story through the lives of her determined mother and grandmother to her own adulthood, parallel to the story of the antislavery movement and the eventual signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Girl in Black and White restores Mary to her rightful place in history and uncovers a dramatic narrative of travels along the Underground Railroad, relationships tested by oppression, and the struggles of life after emancipation. The result is an exposé of the thorny racial politics of the abolitionist movement and the pervasive colorism that dictated where white sympathy lay—one that sheds light on a shameful legacy that still affects us profoundly today.
During the episode, we talked with Jessie about an exhibit at Boston’s Museum of African American History that tried to highlight how Frederick Douglass used photography and his own likeness to white opinion about African American Men. While we were there, we bought a book called Picturing Frederick Douglass, which you might want to check out, in order to contrast his experience with that of Mary Williams.
Upcoming Event
For our upcoming event this week, we’re featuring a lecture in the Old North Speaker Series:
Vaccination Controversies Then and Now: Boston in 1721 and 1901. The lecture will be delivered by David Jones, a Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard, and then followed by a community discussion facilitated by Tegan Kehoe, whom we had the pleasure to meet at History Camp. Here’s how they describe the event:
Immunization is one of the oldest and most effective medical technologies now in use. However, immunization has sparked fierce controversy throughout its history and remains controversial today. This talk will explore the public protests in Boston triggered by the inoculation against smallpox in 1721 and by compulsory vaccination against smallpox in 1901. In each case, opponents of the practice justified their resistance with a mix of arguments that spanned medical theory, religious faith, public safety, and individual rights. The controversy that began in Boston in 1901 reached the Supreme Court in 1905; the resultant ruling, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, still governs public health power today. These historical vignettes provide valuable perspective on modern vaccination controversies and suggest possible ways to move forward.
Afterwards, join us for a reception and Community Conversation with the speaker and Tegan Kehoe, Education and Exhibition Specialist for the Museum of Medical History and Innovation at MGH, for an intimate, open-minded discussion of the current vaccination/anti-vaccination debate in our society.
The event will be held at 6:30pm on November 13 at Old North Church. Ticket sales and more information via eventbrite.