Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
