Podcast appearances and mentions of jessie morgan owens

Today's Black History Month bonus episode revisits our interview with Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens about 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. Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/girl-in-black-and-white-the-story-of-mary-mildred-williams-and-the-abolition-movement-with-jessie-morgan-owens-episode-157/

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! 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. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/157

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. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/157 Support us: http://patreon.com/157

March 22, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. 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.

This week, we’re exploring another overlooked angle of antebellum American history: how photography transformed the abolitionist movement—and in particular, how a photograph of one seven-year-old girl was used to gain a white audience's sympathy. Jessie Morgan-Owens, a photographer and a historian, has written a book about that little girl, Mary Mildred Williams: Girl in Black and White, so named for the tones of daguerreotype, and of Mary herself—who looked white, though she was born into slavery. The story of how Senator Charles Sumner used Mary to advance his antislavery cause tells us a lot about the politics of the 19th century.Go beyond the episode:Jessie Morgan-Owens’s Girl in Black and WhiteRead Frederick Douglass’s speech, “Pictures and Progress,” delivered in Boston in 1861, and the introduction to Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Williams’s anthology of Douglass’s writing on photography (and if you’re feeling particularly brave, try parsing Douglass’s own manuscript at the Library of Congress)As the most photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass left behind a voluminous photographic record, collected in Picturing Frederick DouglassCheck out Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida for a French post-structuralist spin, or W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory for a contemporary take on visual representationSojourner Truth supported herself by selling cartes de visite, in which she’s pictured wearing an iconic white cap and shawl (which she probably knit herself, given that she spun 100 pounds of wool to buy her freedom)The Mirror of Race is an online collection of early photographs about race in America, including critical commentaryMorgan-Owens also edited the 2017 reissue of Mary Hayden Green Pike’s novel Ida May, about a girl whom Charles Sumner compared Mary Mildred WilliamsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play •

Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement restores Mary Mildred Williams 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.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.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

This week, we’re exploring another overlooked angle of antebellum American history: how photography transformed the abolitionist movement—and in particular, how a photograph of one seven-year-old girl was used to gain a white audience's sympathy. Jessie Morgan-Owens, a photographer and a historian, has written a book about that little girl, Mary Mildred Williams: Girl in Black and White, so named for the tones of daguerreotype, and of Mary herself—who looked white, though she was born into slavery. The story of how Senator Charles Sumner used Mary to advance his antislavery cause tells us a lot about the politics of the 19th century.Go beyond the episode:Jessie Morgan-Owens’s Girl in Black and WhiteRead Frederick Douglass’s speech, “Pictures and Progress,” delivered in Boston in 1861, and the introduction to Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Williams’s anthology of Douglass’s writing on photography (and if you’re feeling particularly brave, try parsing Douglass’s own manuscript at the Library of Congress)As the most photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass left behind a voluminous photographic record, collected in Picturing Frederick DouglassCheck out Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida for a French post-structuralist spin, or W. J. T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory for a contemporary take on visual representationSojourner Truth supported herself by selling cartes de visite, in which she’s pictured wearing an iconic white cap and shawl (which she probably knit herself, given that she spun 100 pounds of wool to buy her freedom)The Mirror of Race is an online collection of early photographs about race in America, including critical commentaryMorgan-Owens also edited the 2017 reissue of Mary Hayden Green Pike’s novel Ida May, about a girl whom Charles Sumner compared Mary Mildred WilliamsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • 

Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement restores Mary Mildred Williams 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.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.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.Recorded On: Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Nicole Young graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2007 and immediately began work on the Obama Presidential Campaign. After 2008, she lived in Washington, DC for four years working at the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. Before coming to BECNO, Young served as the Associate Director for Social Justice at the College Board where she worked to evaluate, support, and expand the College Board’s work for students of color. Young received her Master’s Degree in Education Policy at The University of Pennsylvania.   After receiving her doctorate in American Literature at NYU in 2009, Jessie Morgan-Owens served as an Assistant Professor of English at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. In 2012, Morgan-Owens returned to the US, and joined the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. Of the thirty recipients of the Dean's Award at NYU, Morgan-Owens was one of two graduate students chosen to join the research community at the Humanities Initiative. Her current book project Another Ida May illuminates the influence of photography in the anti-slavery campaignby focusing on a daguerreotype of one seven-year-old girl. Originally from Louisiana, Morgan-Owens moved to New York in 2000, after earning her BA in Photojournalism at Loyola New Orleans, to begin a career in magazines at Travel + Leisure. She continues to shoot professionally with her team Morgan & Owens.