Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement

by Jessie Morgan-Owens

Overview

An “engrossing narrative history” (Joanna Scutts, The Lily) of the enslaved girl whose photograph transformed the abolition movement.

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. Due to generations of sexual violence, Mary’s skin was so light she “passed” as white—a fact abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner knew would be the key to his white audience’s sympathy. Girl in Black and White restores Mary to her rightful place in history, “probing issues of colorism and racial politics” (New York Times Book Review) that still affect us profoundly today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393358278
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	314,352
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jessie Morgan-Owens is the dean of studies at Bard Early College in New Orleans, Louisiana. A photographer with the team Morgan & Owens, she received her doctorate from New York University and lives in New Orleans with her family.

Table of Contents

Prologue Boston, May 29, 1855 1

Part 1 Bondage

1 Constance Cornwell, Prince William County, Virginia, 1805 11

2 Prudence Nelson Bell, Nelson's Plantation and Mill, 1826 28

3 Jesse and Albert Bell Nelson, Washington, 1847 43

4 Henry Williams, Boston, 1850 54

Part 2 Manumission

5 John Albion Andrew, Boston, 1852 69

6 Elizabeth Williams, Prince William County, 1852 77

7 Evelina Bell, Washington, February 1855 87

Part 3 Becoming Ida May

8 Mary Hayden Green Pike, Calais, Maine, November 1854 101

9 Julian Vannerson, Washington, February 1855 117

10 Richard Hildreth, Boston, March 1855 130

11 Charles Sumner, Washington, March 1855 141

Part 4 Sensation

12 "A White Slave from Virginia," New York, March 1855 163

13 The Williams Family, Boston, March 7, 1855 172

14 "Features, Skin, and Hair," Boston, March 1855 185

15 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Worcester, Massachusetts, March 27, 1855 195

16 "The Anti-slavery Enterprise," Boston, March 29, 1855 204

Part 5 Private Passages

17 Private Life, Boston, October 1855 223

18 "The Crime Against Kansas," Washington, May 1856 230

19 Frederick Douglass, Boston, 1860 245

20 Prudence Bell, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1864 254

Epilogue Hyde Park Massachusetts, 2017 271

Acknowledgments 279

Notes 287

Illustration Credits 311

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

"With verve and rigor, Morgan-Owens explores the life of Williams, the relationship between photographs, race, and politics, and looks at the way sexual slavery was not discussed nor written about, leaving holes in archives and stories untold."

Boston Globe - Nina MacLaughlin

"Mary Williams’s story is a long and intricate one, ably untangled by Ms. Morgan-Owens."

Wall Street Journal - Fergus M. Bordewich

"Groundbreaking."

New York Times

01/28/2019

In this intriguing addition to the history of abolitionism, historian Morgan-Owens focuses on slave Mary Mildred Williams, whose depiction in early photographs electrified the United States’ anti-slavery activists beginning in 1855. Mary, then aged seven, aroused enormous public fascination and sympathy because, as widely distributed daguerreotypes showed, she was not merely an appealing little girl, but she also appeared to be white, with auburn hair and fair skin. The use of white children to inflame public sentiment against slavery, Morgan-Owens points out, “perpetuated the racial hierarchy that made slavery possible in the first place.” Morgan-Owens insightfully explores the “overlapping histories” of abolitionism and photography in the decades immediately before the Civil War. This convergence turned Mary and her family into celebrities for a number of years before they faded into obscurity; the lighter-skinned members, including Mary, “passed” for white in the Boston area while those of darker complexion resided amongst the city’s African-Americans. Although no documents survive that include Mary’s voice, Morgan-Owens skillfully intersperses a variety of primary sources—such as letters, wills, and works of abolitionist propaganda—with her own narrative. While this history’s structure is somewhat loose and shaggy, Morgan-Owens has located a fascinating story and tells it with verve, adding a new dimension to the much-studied struggle against slavery in America. Illus. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"In a tour de force of historical recovery, Girl in Black and White combines a compelling, meticulously researched biography of the slave child abolitionists adored (and exploited) with a fascinating history of photography and visual culture. At the same time, Morgan-Owens’s careful inquiry into the complexities of so-called white slavery provides a disturbing look at the limits of social sympathy that relies on similarity. This beautifully written book challenges sentimental notions of national progress and offers new ways to patch together the true story of America’s racial past."

Carla Kaplan

"Girl in Black and White tells a mesmerizing story made vivid by the author’s keen eye for detail. This is a riveting story of an individual’s life, an important biography of an era, and a phenomenal contribution to discussions about the meaning of race in America."

Emily Bernard

2019-01-06

An earnest account of abolitionism's forgotten "poster child."

In 1855, when she was only 7 years old, Mary Mildred Williams experienced two life-altering events: Her family was freed from slavery, and her photograph was taken for the abolitionist cause. The resulting daguerreotype, circulated widely by white anti-slavery leaders, depicted a light-skinned child whose features were deemed "indisputab[ly] white" by the press. Billed as a "white slave," Williams was eagerly exhibited by Charles Sumner, an abolitionist senator, to sold-out audiences, making her a living prop on the main stage of the anti-slavery movement. Rhetoric used by such leaders succeeded in igniting white American sympathy, a "selective solidarity" that was otherwise uninspired by dark-skinned black people's well-documented traumas. In a spirited narrative, photographer Morgan-Owens (Dean of Studies/Bard Early Coll. New Orleans) highlights Williams' trajectory into the spotlight. Along the way, the author confronts a range of often unspoken realities, including the anti-black sentiments that permeated the white abolitionist community, the rampant sexual enslavement that black women endured, and the subsequent dynamic of colorism employed in so-called progressive white America. Though the author occasionally struggles to convey the complex web of Williams' life and historical context, her passionate investigation notably uplifts Williams' true surname, rebuking the historical record for identifying Williams by the family name of her slave father's owner. Morgan-Owens ambitiously attempts "to name, and correct" the "myopic failures of white sympathy" that she documents in her book, succeeding mainly in the former. Self-aware as she strives to be, white gaze is conspicuous, from the author's overconfident fictionalizations of Williams' behaviors and emotional responses to her dramatic indictment of "us," the "future readers, who might not remember the tragedies borne." Since people of color are not likely to forget such history, perhaps Morgan-Owens is speaking to her own. Still, the book is a valuable contribution to abolitionist history.

An imperfect but worthy perspective on a critical period of American history.

Kirkus Reviews