Truevine Read online

  Sabotage of recording about slavery at Colonial Williamsburg: Michael S. Durham, “The Word Is Slaves: A Trip into Black History,” American Heritage Journal (April 1992).

  “about the same as getting into paradise”: Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1907), 7, http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/washing.html.

  Slave narrative of Armistead Reeves: Recounted by Janet Johnson to author, Nov. 11, 2013, and again by his grandson A. J. Reeves, Sept. 15, 2014.

  How sharecroppers were often cheated out of pay: Jay R. Mandle, The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation Economy After the Civil War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978), 25.

  Dishonesty of farmers on “settling-day”: Among the complaints logged in Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands: Virginia, Rocky Mount, Letters Sent, 1866–1868, pp. 45–48, compiled by U.S. National Archives and Record Service [n.d.]: A former slave was starving with her three children and deemed she was “better off before freedom”; a former slave trader told blacks in the region not to vote, then whites tried to incite blacks to hang him (they would have been blamed for the riots); and several complaints from sharecroppers who didn’t get paid at all, 182.

  no choice but to return: Ibid., 48. In some cases, interest rates were as high as 200 percent, according to Richard Wormser, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003), 36.

  only a fool would question the landlord’s math: Andrew Baskin, author interview, Oct. 28, 2014. Baskin also coauthored Studies in the Local History of Slavery: Essays Prepared for the Booker T. Washington National Monument (Ferrum, VA: Ferrum College, 1978).

  Violence against sharecroppers questioning landlord’s accounting: Theodore Rosengarten’s All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

  “I find an inclination”: Freedmen’s Bureau Records, p. 200, as noted on the copy held at Franklin County Library, Rocky Mount, VA.

  “It was the onliest way we had to make money”: Author interview, Thelma Muse Lee, Sept. 15, 2014.

  Muse and Dickerson descendants in Franklin County: Elizabeth Muse and Martha Dickerson/Dickinson/Dickenson (spellings varied) were prominent slave owners in the region. Harriett Dickerson Muse may have been born on Dickerson land. (Her parents were Edmund and Martha Dickerson, according to her Franklin County marriage license.) Ex-slaves by the last names Muse, Finney, and Pullen purchased farm-working equipment from Martha Dickerson in 1867, according to a slave inventory abstract compiled for Audrey Dudley and Diane Hayes, eds., Oh, Master (self-published, 2002), suggesting that they lived near one another.

  Remarkable story of former slave Samuel Walker: Bill Archer, “Samuel Walker: Slave, Freedman, and Pensioner, 1842–1933,” Virginia Cavalcade (Winter 2001).

  Railroad presence in West Virginia coalfields: Ronald Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian: The Migration of Southern Blacks to the Central Appalachian Coalfields,” Journal of Southern History 55, no. 1 (1989): 77–102.

  Black men’s eagerness to join cash economy: Wormser, Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, 58.

  Documentation of Cabell Muse’s first paid work alongside other Truevine natives: 1900 U.S. Census figures: Cabell/Calvin Muse (first-name spelling varied; he was sometimes even listed as Calbert) “works on track” in Rock, WV, and shared a household with Franklin County–born blacks, including N. H. Pullen (Charles Pullen’s grandfather), William Belcher, and Patrick Payne. A. J. Reeves’s father, Robert Reeves, was living with William Muse and Jack Hopkins in the same locality and working as a blacksmith.

  The hard labor of building railroad track: Sheree Scarborough, African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014), 11.

  Railroad-camp violence: “Murdered by Tramps: Special Policeman and Telegraph Operator Shot in N. & W. Yards,” Washington Post, July 27, 1904.

  Masterless men: Wormser, Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, 54.

  Du Bois’s description of “race feud”: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover, 1994), 23, 65.

  black people lacked the necessary intelligence: Baskin, Studies in the Local History of Slavery, 94.

  Treatment of blacks as subhuman: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 235.

  Sad parallel story of Ota Benga: Pamela Newkirk, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (New York: Amistad, 2015). The story is also told by Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume in Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992).

  National media’s racist coverage of Ota Benga: Mitch Keller, “The Scandal at the Zoo,” New York Times, Aug. 6, 2006.

  Ota Benga’s suicide: Mike Hudson, “The Man They Put in the Zoo,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 7, 1993.

  “about as near to nowhere”: Booker T. Washington, An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington: The Story of My Life and Work (Atlanta: J. L. Nichols, 1901), 15.

  Chapter Three. And Still the Cry Against Us Continues

  Interviews: Rand Dotson, A. L. Holland, Bev Fitzpatrick, Oliver Hill, Willie Mae Ingram, Regina “Sweet Sue” Holmes Peeks

  The inception of Roanoke: Roanoke’s growth was fastest between 1880 and 1890, according to Rand Dotson, Roanoke, Virginia, 1882–1912: Magic City of the New South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), 105.

  How Norfolk and Western Railway ended up in Roanoke: Ibid., 15.

  Origin of city’s name: The name Roanoke comes from the American Indian word rawrenoc, meaning “shell money,” from Beth Macy, “What’s in a Name?,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 21, 2002.

  How Roanoke businesses exploited state’s coal deposits: New York Times, Aug. 27, 1883.

  Growing pains in Roanoke: Clare White, Roanoke: 1740–1982 (Roanoke, VA: Roanoke Valley Historical Society, 1982), 87.

  Early Roanoke drinking culture: Dotson, Roanoke, Virginia, 21.

  “Big Lick to Bigger Lick”: Ibid., 232.

  Ridiculing of country people in Roanoke’s early days: Ibid., 115.

  Racism in early Roanoke: Ibid., 23.

  “Roanoke was incredibly hostile to African Americans”: Author interview, Rand Dotson, Oct. 2, 2014.

  Cabell Muse’s first job in Roanoke: Water job listed on Cabell (spelled Cabble) Muse’s World War I draft registration card; labor details confirmed by contemporary George Davis photos of the Roanoke Water Company, now part of the Western Virginia Water Authority.

  Early 1900s restriction of black voting: Ben Beagle, “The 1902 Constitution: A Bleak Era for Blacks,” Roanoke Times, special series reprint on race, “Black Virginia: Progress, Poverty & Paradox,” 1984. The number of African Americans qualified to vote dropped from 147,000 to 21,000 immediately.

  The Reverend R. R. Jones’s escape from Roanoke and reaction in black press: Richmond Planet, as quoted in Roanoke Times, April 6, 1904.

  Racist sentiments in wake of Shields case: Between 1880 and 1930, twenty-four blacks were lynched in southwest Virginia alone, according to a chart compiled by historian John Kern, Kern Collection, Virginia Room, Roanoke City Library.

  Roanoke ordinance codifies housing segregation: Naomi A. Mattos, “Segregation by Custom Versus Segregation by Law, 1910–1917, City of Roanoke,” written for Roanoke Regional Preservation Office, 2005; on file with Kern Collection.

  Summary of Jim Crow laws and their impact from Richmond Planet editor: Ann Field Alexander, Race Man: The Rise and Fall of the “Fighting Editor” John Mitchell Jr. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 173.

  National resurgence of Ku Klux Klan: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 192.

  Blues song about marrying a railroad man: “Berta, Berta,” quoted in August Wilson, The Piano Lesson (New York: Penguin, 1990), 40.

  Memory of early black migration pattern to Roanoke: Author intervie
w, A. L. Holland, Nov. 11, 2014, and cited in Sheree Scarborough’s African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014).

  Jim Crow humiliations for black workers in railroad work camps: Mason Scott, worker, interview by historian Michael A. Cooke, March 16, 1991, in Cooke, “Race Relations in Montgomery County, Virginia, 1870–1990,” Journals of the Appalachian Studies Association (March 1992).

  How Jordan’s Alley got its name: In 1882 a man named John N. Jordan bought a rooming house owned by the son of early Roanoke developer Ferdinand Rorer. It had a bar that made the adjoining narrow alleyway a popular thoroughfare and earned the nickname Jordan’s Alley. Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 97.

  Description of rail yard’s impact on Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Bev Fitzpatrick, Virginia Museum of Transportation executive director, on 1920s-era roundhouse conditions, Aug. 11, 2015. The roundhouse was later moved westward to Shaffer’s Crossing.

  Description of Muses’ block in Jordan’s Alley: Drawn from a 1929 Appraisal Map, Office of City Engineer, Sheet No. 111, on file at Roanoke City Hall.

  Dr. I. D. Burrell’s death: Mary Bishop, “A History of Strength,” Roanoke Times, April 25, 1993.

  Oliver Hill’s description of segregated black school conditions: Beth Macy, “She Touched on Us to Eternity,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 5, 2006.

  Hill’s description of threatened racial violence: Jonathan K. Stubbs, ed., The Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond: The Autobiography of Oliver W. Hill, Sr. (Winter Park, FL: Four-G, 2000), 34.

  Du Bois’s “Talented Tenth”: Du Bois believed a black man had a one-in-ten chance of becoming a leader but needed classical education to reach full potential, in contrast to the industrial education and trades proposed by Booker T. Washington. “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” he wrote in “The Talented Tenth,” September 1903: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-talented-tenth/.

  Living conditions in Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Willie Mae Ingram, Nov. 11, 2014.

  Family life in Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Regina “Sweet Sue” Holmes Peeks, Nov. 11, 2014.

  Poverty in Roanoke’s West End today: Hurt Park Elementary statistics at Virginia Department of Education, Office of School Nutrition Programs, as of October 2014: http://www.pen.k12.va.us/support/nutrition/statistics/free_reduced_eligibility/2014-2015/schools/frpe_sch_report_sy2014-15.pdf.

  Chapter Four. Your Momma Is Dead

  Interviews: Warren Raymond, Howard Tibbals, Richard Dillard, Joshua Bond, Bonnie LeRoy, Robert Bogdan, Al Stencell, Fred Dahlinger

  Freaks as “aristocrats”: Patricia Bosworth’s Diane Arbus: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 177.

  Description of sideshow exhibits: Richard W. Flint, “Promoting Peerless Prodigies ‘To the Curious,’” in Kristin L. Spangenberg and Deborah W. Walk, eds., The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithographing Company (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 2011), 48–54.

  Lew Graham’s definition of a good freak act: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 236.

  Sideshow pecking order: Author interview, Warren Raymond, Feb. 26, 2015.

  a hyperbolic spiel: A pitchman, also known as a talker but never a barker, would deliver the pitch, according to a pamphlet written by retired showman Joe McKennon, Circus Lingo (Sarasota, FL: Carnival Publishers of Sarasota, 1980), my go-to source for circus slang throughout this book.

  “The brothers were descended from monkeys”: As recounted in Bradna, Big Top, 237.

  “Two Ecuador white savages”: How Lee Graham first spun the Muse brothers’ act, “Lew Graham Made One of Finds of His Career,” Billboard, July 27, 1922.

  “All for the insignificant sum”: Felix Isman, Weber and Fields: Their Tribulations, Triumphs and Their Associates (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924).

  Diane Arbus’s portrayal of sideshow subjects: Arbus’s photograph of Jack Dracula was not printed in the magazine, but the final image, selected as AR00570, is in the holdings of the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, “Jack Dracula, the Marked Man, N.Y.C.,” available at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arbus-jack-dracula-in-a-bar-nyc-al00191/text-summary.

  Howard Tibbals’s circus collection: Billy Cox, “Howard Tibbals and the Huge Miniature Circus,” Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune, Jan. 19, 2012.

  “I hate sideshows”: Author interview, Howard Tibbals, Dec. 3, 2014.

  James Baldwin on freaks: “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” in Toni Morrison, ed., James Baldwin: Collected Essays (New York: Library of America, 1998). Also published in James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Essays, 1948–1985 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985).

  “the freaks are the good people!”: Author interview, Richard Dillard, Nov. 24, 2014.

  Freak pride “in being a burden to nobody”: A. W. Stencell, Seeing Is Believing: America’s Sideshows (Toronto: ECW Press, 2002).

  Zip’s supposed last words: Leslie Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (New York: Anchor, 1978).

  Press agents’ influence on circus coverage: “I am a creature born of the minds of newspapermen, a genie of journalistic paste jars, a fantastic flower nurtured in a pot of printer’s ink, a product of the freedom of the press,” longtime Ringling press agent Dexter Fellows writes in his autobiography, Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), prologue.

  Barnum’s controlling of Zip: Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 136.

  Zip paid not to talk: Ibid., 135.

  Popularity of sideshow portraits during Victorian era: Ibid., 12.

  Analysis of clothing in photo of Muse brothers: Author interview, Joshua Bond, Nov. 18, 2014.

  Incidence of albinism: Armand Marie Leroi, Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body (New York: Viking, 2003), 254.

  Poor eyesight among albinos: Author interview, Bonnie LeRoy, June 4, 2015.

  Negative views of albinos: Maryrose Cuskelly, Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011).

  Possibility of Noah’s being an albino: Damon Rose, “The People Who Think Noah Had Albinism,” BBC News, April 3, 2014.

  “start seeing beauty in difference”: Rick Guidotti, “From Stigma to Supermodel,” TED Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/rick_guidotti_from_stigma_to_supermodel.

  Background on history of science, albinism, and early entertainment-venue draws: Taken primarily from Bogdan, Freak Show, and author interview, Bogdan, Sept. 2, 2014, and from Charles D. Martin, The White African American Body: A Cultural and Literary Exploration (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), from which the story of Jefferson’s fascination with albinism is also summarized.

  Jefferson’s fascination with albinos: The first Notes on the State of Virginia was compiled in 1781, then updated in 1782 and 1783. Topics covered ranged from natural resources, religion, and economy to Jefferson’s belief that blacks and whites could not live together in a free society; later printed in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, May 1781–March 1784 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 423.

  Jefferson’s suggestion that Africans had sex with apes: Joe Feagin, sociologist and race scholar, interviewed by George Yancy, “American Racism in the ‘White Frame,’” New York Times, July 27, 2015.

  Charles Willson Peale’s museum: Bogdan, Freak Show, 29.

  Argument for vitiligo as cure for blackness: Dr. Benjamin Rush put forward his theory in a 1796 letter to Thomas Jefferson, according to John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

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p; Barnum adding the bling: Bogdan, Freak Show, 32.

  Freak hunting described: Freddie Darius Benham, “The Side Show Manager,” Circus Scrap Book 1, no. 4 (October 1929): 27–30.

  Account of Unzie: As written in Frederick Drimmer’s Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities (New York: Amjon, 1973), 31.

  Premature sideshow obituary: “Tragic Retreat of Human Freaks Before Picture Shows,” Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1911.

  Freak-wanted ads: Billboard, March 13, 1915, and Sept. 13, 1919.

  First description of brothers’ first carnival: J. A. Forbes, “Great American Shows,” Billboard, Feb. 7, 1914.

  Background on Miller’s carnival: Ibid.

  lot lice: Gene Plowden, Circus Press Agent: The Life and Times of Roland Butler (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1984).

  Importance of lot lice: Author interview, Al Stencell, March 1, 2015.

  Miller’s carnival acts described: Billboard, Aug. 1, 1914.

  First description of brothers as “monkey-face men”: Fort Wayne (IN) Journal-Gazette, Sept. 4, 1914.

  Typical ballyhoo for albino acts: As described in Harry Lewiston’s Freak Show Man: The Autobiography of Harry Lewiston as Told to Jerry Holtman (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968).

  “Sunday boil-up”: Bogdan, Freak Show, 75.

  Description of various carnival acts: “Great American Shows Will Be One of the Big Features on the Fair Grounds Next Week,” Fort Wayne (IN) Daily News, Sept. 10, 1914.

  Cyclist drafted into German army: Billboard, Oct. 24, 1914.

  Carnival murder: “Snake Charmer Involved in Tragedy,” Billboard, Oct. 24, 1914.

  “The Southern darky is in clover this fall”: “Shows Cleaning Up,” Billboard, Nov. 11, 1916, p. 64.

  Complicated lives of sideshow acts and managers: Author interview, Stencell, Nov. 14, 2014.