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

by Jessie Morgan-Owens

The riveting, little-known story of Mary Mildred Williams—a slave girl who looked “white”—whose photograph transformed the abolitionist 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. 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, American History, African American, Race, Audiobook

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2019

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.

Reviews

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 1 out of 5]

**1.5 Stars**

I just finished this book & I still don't know what it was about. Was this a book about photography? Literary criticism? Slavery? Abolitionist history? The Civil War? The Underground Railroad? Passing? Court trials? Senator Sumner? Frederick Douglass? John Brown? Obscure photographers & their studios? Massachusetts? I hope you get my point here....

I thought this was going to be a book about a little girl & how she was used/exploited by abolitionists to bring people to their cause. The actual story about Mary is scant, at best. The book goes off on so many tangents, you keep reading to see if it gets any better. Sadly, it does not. (Case in point, when Ms Morgan-Owens finally gets around to what became of Mary's family, I had completely forgotten who these people were & kept asking myself, why should I care if some old lady had her portrait painted while laying in her coffin? It wasn't until half way through that chapter that I realized she was talking about Mary's grandmother, Pru.)

While Mary's story is interesting, it is not one that should be the subject matter for an entire book. At least this is not the book to tell it. This book feels more like Ms Morgan-Owens reached into a bag of topics/people, grabbed one, and proceeded to write about it. And while I feel bad about leaving such an unfavorable review, because there is an obvious amount of work & research that has been done here, I still don't know why I continued to read it.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2019, the author Jessie Morgan-Owens came to the bookstore Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. She was so nice and gracious to let me, a congressional staffer working in the Capitol Visitor Center, show her the chamber where Charles Sumner was brutally attacked. Her book, so throughly researched, so mindful of how complex not only of race and slavery but of the abolition movement, of the use of photography for moral suasion, sentimental literature — was fantastic. And all centered around one little girl and her family who for far too long we knew so little and may yet uncover more. I’m sorry haven’t read it sooner. My copy is bursting with posted notes because there’s so much I must commit to memory. My nerdy public history friends on Capitol Hill are going to hear me raving about this book and the connections and impact of
Mary Mildred Williams.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely could not put down! If you at all enjoy non-fiction that challenge your perceptions, you have to get this book. Photography, politics, race genealogy, and feminism, in one incredible history.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great random pick for me. I really loved what Morgan-Owens was going for in this book and I felt I truly learned a lot by her using the basis of Mary Mildred Williams, or "Ida May" for a side of slavery that one does not typically hear of - including sexual slavery and the result of former slaves being able to pass as white citizens.

The book was well written but there was no cohesive timeline. The author breaks down the chapters into individuals involved in Mary's life, but it does not always work well - sometimes - because there is little to say about the individual. Morgan-Owens likely chose the Williams family story, because it is so interesting and could be used as a topic to thread together topics surrounding slavery and the United States at the time. The writing comes off choppy and I felt the book would have been better off with a timeline of topics, interwoven with the Williams family story. Instead the author focused on highlighting the individuals.

I also felt that the author could have extrapolated on topics she brought up but then didn't delve into completely - sexual slavery, life as a free slave in the North, etc. It seemed like she was holding back a lot.

I also appreciated the author's commentary on certain aspects of our society, giving a new perspective that many things we still do or say are unknowingly offensive. I also appreciated some of her honest revelations on topics and moments.

I was taken aback by some of the descriptions that the abolitionists and citizens were able to pull together during the time period - the response in Boston to the Fugitive Slave Law, the crowds gathering at the court house to ensure the freedom of a former slave, the "Vigilance Committee." These are the sorts of things we need today - I feel like citizens (the majority) are just afraid to stand up for injustices. What bothered me the most, wasn't anything to do with the book, but the obvious truth that Sumner had to use Mary Williams to get white people to agree that slavery was horrible!

Worthy read!

[Joe Keefhaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is yet another look at the many-faceted story of American slavery and the abolition movement. A young slave girl, who is by all appearances white, is used by abolitionists in the 1850's to emphasize the evils of slavery. Abolitionist leaders, such as Sen. Charles Sumner, rightly know that Northern white audiences will be more sympathetic to the cause if they see people who look "just like them" can be held in slavery. The negative aspect to this thinking is that a little black girl is no more deserving of being a slave, but there is more outrage at the thought of a white slave. There is a general failure on the part of society in that day to dwell on the subject of how descendants of black slaves turned up looking white. The author makes clear that a component of American slavery had to do with sexual slavery -- human trafficking, as we would call it today. The book elaborates on the dangers facing free blacks and blacks who are "passing" for white. It also makes clear the all-consuming nature of the national debate about slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. Recounted is the anger over implementation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, as well as the vicious beating of Sen. Sumner in the Senate chamber by a pro-slavery Congressman.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and an important contribution to the history of abolition in this country. Surprising that a book, “Ida May,” by Mary Hayden Green Pike of Calais, Maine figured so prominently in this book and in the anti-slavery movement. There was one mistake — the author cited the Chicago Institute of Art. It’s the Art Institute of Chicago.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary’s story is an interesting one that I’d never heard, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to carry a whole book. The beginning read like a family tree with too many branches, the end like a brief history of abolition and the start of the Civil War.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and thought it was a very fast read. I loved how she took a single photograph and found the history surrounding it. This book did great job in intertwining the narrative of photography and history, two of my favorite things.

[Joshua Van Dereck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Girl in Black and White is a magnificent and painstaking work of scholarship. Jessie Morgan-Owens has systematically reconstructed the utterly lost history of Mary Mildred Williams, a girl slave from Antebellum Virginia whose skin was so white (from generations of slave rape by masters) that she became a poster child for the Abolitionist movement's assault on the institution of slavery.

Given that Mary Williams left no written accounts or even solitary remarks on the pages of history, Morgan-Owens' work is nothing shy of majestic. Following census data, newspaper clippings, archives, correspondence anecdotes from a whole host of different actors in her life, and many details pulled from court records, Morgan-Owens cobbles together a story that offers an amazing view into the realities of mid-nineteenth century American slavery and the fight to abolish it.

I am not usually very enthusiastic about narrative nonfiction, preferring that history be presented as a spartan array of facts without adornment save analysis, but I actually think that Morgan-Owens does a wonderful job in this book providing context and texture for the actors. The way that she weaves back and forth between narrative episodes, embedded primary sources, and her own analytical perspective makes very clear which sections are just the facts and where she has added narrative structure.

There is such a wealth of detail about the period and all of the events surrounding Mary Mildred Williams' role that I have already been inspired to look up and acquire further reading. The depth of Morgan-Owens' scholarship and earnest, obstinate search for information has dusted off a path to further scholarly exploration, and I am both excited and moved to learn more.

There is much discussion in these pages over the morality of the abolitionist excitement over the discovery of a "white" slave. Morgan-Owens tends to evaluate the period actors with the stern (and, honestly reasonable) judgment of a twenty-first century American. That said, given how frequently slavery apologists framed the value of slavery in terms of racial hierarchy—espousing the benefits of the civilizing influence of bondage on the "inferior and barbaric" race of African peoples, the rhetorical significance of discovering a "white" girl in bondage becomes clear. Tearing away the racist foundations for slavery exposes the institution for the brutal, uncivilized, and barbaric practice that it was. That American citizens ought to have been opposed to the enslavement of human beings irrespective of race is entirely fair, but perhaps a bit naive (in many cases, at least) given the ingrained racism of the day.

What is missing from Girl in Black and White is a sense of the scope and impact of Sumner's photo of Mary Williams. Morgan-Owens documents a variety of people who saw it, some newspaper proliferation of the story, and a handful of events where Mary Mildred Williams appeared in person. It would be nice to have a more concrete sense of the sheer number of people who came in contact with the story and were thus subject to its rhetorical power. Alas, quantifying the story is probably utterly implausible...

So... should a general audience read Girl in Black and White? That's hard to say. The story weaves around significantly, following the convoluted knot of Morgan-Owens' research. There is rich history in these pages, but it is fairly niche compared to a more general narrative of slavery and abolitionism. I think that it's fair to say that for someone actively interested in the Civil War and the associated conflicts, Girl in Black and White would prove a rewarding read. I certainly got a lot out of it. For someone more casually interested in the history, there are easier books with broader scope.

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good read.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of those books that I am absolutely delighted to have encountered.

While I do not think that Mary Mildred Williams will become a household name, the name Ida May is one that will become better known!

Ida May was the title of a book published in 1854. The book was about a 5 year old white girl who was kidnapped from her parents and sold into slavery. Because of the "whitening" of slaves (e.g. slave owners raping their slaves), the pale skin of Ida was accepted.

While the book was a work of fiction, it tapped into an underlying fear of Northerners. First, there was a vast fear of children being kidnapped. Second, there was a fear due to the Fugutive Slave Act that southerners could come claiming a person was a slave and ship them back to the south into slavery. The kidnapping of a white girl and placing her into slavery, where it was understood that light skinned girls would become sex slaves, became a haunting vision in the 1850s.

Ida May sold more books in its first year than PT Barnum's autobiography, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Solomon Northrops Twelve Years a Slave, or Herman Melville sold in his entire life! Ida May was a bonafide best seller.

Mary Mildred Williams was a "real life Ida May" or "Ida May II"---with a twist. Williams was toured around the North and abolitionist circuit by the radical abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner. Only William's story had a twist---while she looked white, she really was born a slave to a light skinned woman.

Williams being black gave Sumner another avenue of attack on racist ideals. Sumner was a true radical in the 1800's who fought not just for the abolition of slavery, but for equality of blacks.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know much about this book or the story it reports when I picked it up. I learned a few things (or had them illustrated and reinforced in solid detail).
1. Quite a few enslavers who declared intentions to free slaves (often their own children) did not do the paperwork to accomplish it, or did it in half-baked ways through wills that could be challenged.
2. It was not hard to mire these half-hearted manumissions in the courts for years of agonizing litigation.
3. The abolitionist movement of the 19th century contain many people whose racism is cringe-worthy today.
4. Perhaps if the former were less true, the abolition of slavery could have been a cleaner and more effective thing and we wouldn't still be mired in the results of slavery now.
5. There's a lot of sausage-making that goes into the making of history. For me the jury is still out on whether those who approached what we now think of as noble causes on the right side of history were more pure-hearted, things would have gone better. But maybe we needed everyone who was willing to act, even if their motives and view were less than what we wish they might have been.

I didn't finish this book because it gave me too much detail on things I find painful: the racism and wrong-headedness of various abolitionist leaders. I don't know if I might have gained something important by reading more, but it was rather disheartening, and I need heartening these days.

[Carolyn Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mary Mildred Williams was a slave girl whose skin, because of generations of sexual violence, was light enough to allow her to pass for white. Because of this she became the poster-child for the abolitionist movement when in 1855 Senator Charles Sumner took the 7-year old Mary with him on his abolitionist lecture tour.
Unfortunately the title of the book is misleading because it really is not the story of Mary, of whom very little more is known than stated above. It’s more a history of her parents and grandparents, the growth of the abolition movement, the process of manumission and the role of photography . The facts relating to Mary herself could have been collected into one brief chapter and by the end of the book I felt I knew a lot more about Senator Sumner than Mary Mildred.
I’m sorry to be negative when obviously so much research went into this project but I borrowed the book in the expectation of reading one thing, only to find out it was something else.

[Micebyliz]

What a story! I am not sure what to think. All of it is so awful that i don't know where to begin. Not the book, that was very good, I mean the story of this little girl. She was USED. At first i thought it was clear how hypocritical and incredibly stupid the whole thing was to use her the way they did, and then it got so complicated--which of course it was on so many levels, and disgusting!--i'm not sure that i am qualified to untangle the mess. I think my head would explode. I wonder, whenever i read about the abolitionists, how far they really would have gone in their own lives for the lives of others.
I was happy to read of Thoreau's actions, more information than i had known, but would these people literally sacrifice themselves for the sake of others as did many people during the other Holocaust?
Would they stand up and say "i am Spartacus?" I wonder if i would, i certainly hope so.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free arc of this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

Girl in Black and White is the historical account of Mary Mildred Williams and those around her who used her as a prop to advance the abolition movement.
Jessie Morgan-Owens does a great job at presenting a vast amount of obviously very well researched information without it feeling dry or tedious to read.
I appreciated the acknowledgment that those that turned Mary into a poster child for slavery did so because white men have trouble fully acknowledging the humanity of others different from them and in doing so they also ended up perpetuating the racial hierarchy that made this iteration of slavery possible.
Overall this is a very interesting book that covers the abolition movement, history of photography, civil war era and genealogy of Mary Mildred Williams and her family.

[Natacha Pavlov · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I won a copy of this book through Goodreads giveaways.*

This deeply researched work tells of the little-known story of Mary Mildred Williams―a slave girl who looked “white”―whose photograph transformed the abolitionist movement.
Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, some aspects were disturbing, like some needing to connect slavery to a white child in order to realize its inherent wrong. (Popular abolitionist novels of the time also played a part in this, among them the now lesser known title 'Ida May').

A commendable effort by the author to share this untold story.

[Shequita Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really enlightening narrative about the political uses of a "white-skinned," enslaved black girl and how her whiteness was used to make arguments against slavery in the U.S. At times, I hoped for more discussion about the spectacle of Mary Mildred as a "white slave" alongside the immense popularity of blackface minstrelsy in the U.S. Morgan-Owens does bring in a bit of popular entertainment of the time, though. This study opens the door for this relationship between politics and popular culture in interesting ways. For other readers, too, though, this is a fascinating story.

[Nessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this approach to be quite interesting. The use of photography to gain white sympathy for slaves who were fair skinned and to demonstrate that slavers could steal white children and pass them off as mulatto was not something I had ever considered. It also proved to northerners that sexual slavery as common, with many offspring being fair and enslaved to their fathers. Mostly I enjoyed the writing about Mary Mildred and her family's quest for freedom.

[Ginger Poulsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinda sad that someone decided to use a white-appearing girl as a poster child for the movement to abolish slavery. Because the horror of it could not be recognized unless the slave looked like their own kids? Also sad that the slave population was growing paler with time due to owners raping (or at least misusing) the slave women.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, I remember hearing about this girl and the controversy around her years ago. It was an fascinating and intriguing story. Anyone who enjoys these anecdotes in history will love this book. Very informative.
I received a Kindle arc from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

[Penni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compiled from historical documents it was a bit tedious to read. However it angered me, made me cry, enlightened me, and completely made me uncomfortable. But then that is what slavery did and we must remember.

[David Blankenship · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some fascinating history here. But overall the book seems disorganized. The story of a slave family and the campaign to spread abolitionist sentiment is well-researched but at times it seems as if the author is dumping a lot of background footnotes rather than focusing on the main story.

[Blue Cypress Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an excellent work of history!

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid historical writing.

[Suzann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps not enough is known about Mary to sustain a full book, but the author expertly weaves in enough complementary history to leave the reader satisfied.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too repetitive, get bogged down in minutia.

[Camden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject matter. But a boring read.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work of magnificent research with real insights on race and slavery that is somewhat marred by anachronistic speculation.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing true story that so vividly speaks to the horrific history of racism in this country. Jesse Morgan Owens writes a compelling story. Almost finished; highly recommend if you’re interested in this topic!