Longfellow has two cameos in Girl in Black and White, and I am looking forward to checking out Craigie House in person. At the Longfellow House — Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
Beforehand, let’s swing by Senator Sumner’s grave at Mt. Auburn Cemetery and have lunch at Sofra.
The home of Mary’s daguerreotype and the archive where this whole adventure began! 5:30 Reception, followed by a talk at 6pm. $10, but free for members and EFT.
The site of thousands of hours of snowy archival research during the Spring of 2013, I’ll return to the AAS to show the folks what I’ve found and check out my old room at the scholar’s house.
9 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.
Senate Committee Room A
Discussion
Transcending the Lines: Mixed Race Politics and Colorism
10 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing
As part of the annual literary festival in honor of Faulkner’s birthday, I will be a part of a week’s worth of talks, panels, and critiques aimed at bringing up the next generation of greatness.
The talk is one I’ve been wanting to give for a long time, sitting in my notes labeled as “how to” — that I wrote directly after finishing the research, in order to capture my steps in finding Mary’s story for others to follow.
Also, there’s going to be cafe au lait and croissants and it’s held at Bon Appetit’s featured “new restaurant” the Hotel Peter and Paul.
Local organizers from the People's institute will engage in a conversation with Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, the author of Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Come explore with us the way that black & white frames the reality of our families, our communities, our churches, and our daily lives.
Date/Time: Sunday July 14, 2-3:30 pm
Robert E Smith Library
A new Orleans resident’s reading at the Cabildo, with Poet Kalamu Ya Salaam and Gordon Wilson.
Email Rosemary James to RSVP to the event, for free admission to the museum for the event (plus a glass of wine): faulkhouse@aol.com
Faulkner House Books will be selling books for signing (for all three authors) after the event.
Presenting 8 minutes of Girl in Black and White at “Why There Are Words” Literary Series with old and new friends: Tom Andes, Brad Richard, Nordette Adams, Josie Ann Scanlon, and Rodrigo Toscano.
At Octavia Books, Wednesday evening.
A New Orleans author rite-of-passage: the Octavia Books reading! New Orleans, I know you have been waiting for me to finally make it uptown, please come out for this special hometown stop on the tour.
Please use this link to pre-order your copy of Girl in Black and White at Octavia.
Bard College in Annandale New York is calling me back to the mothership to share my book with BECNO alumni and the greater Bard Community. Organized by David Shein and Christian Crouch, with the Historical Studies Program faculty. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the event, thanks to Oblong Books & Music of Rhinebeck, NY.
I’ll be at Bard all day on Monday, so let’s catch up!
Location TBD (probably Olin)
I’ll be at the Margaret Mitchell House at Atlanta History Center, for the first time in late March.
Admission for lectures is $10 general public, $5 for members, and free to AHC Insiders unless otherwise noted.
Charles Sumner read the papers here when he was in Boston. Henry Williams waited tables around the corner. John Albion Andrew was a regular. I’ve spent some time in this glorious archive, and this lecture will focus on the Boston chapters of Mary’s story. Their slogan: “Sweet are the fruit of letters”
Be like the antebellum intellectuals: take a lunch hour at 10 1/2 Beacon St, attend a lecture at the Athenaeum, and spend the afternoon in the magical stacks. The talk will take place in the Bayard Henry Long Room on the Athenaeum's first floor.
Free with admission ($10). Register here. A book signing will follow.
I’ve made many pilgrimages to Concord as an Americanist and as a photographer. Henry Williams also visited Concord, twice, once as a fugitive and once in an errand of thanks.
Tickets are $5.00 for nonmembers. Register here. Books will be available for purchase and signing on site, thanks to the Concord Bookshop.
Join us for a conversation with author Jessie Morgan-Owens, as she discusses her book Girl in Black And White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement—the story of Mary Mildred Williams, an enslaved girl who looked “white,” is little-known, but her photograph transformed the abolitionist movement.
The culmination of Girl in Black and White came from years of archival research through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, and from the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. These explorations took her through archives, courthouses, interviews, and the Concord Museum collection uncovering all she could of Mary Mildred Williams’ untold story.
Members free, Nonmembers $5. Books available for purchasing and signing in partnership with the Concord Bookshop.
So excited to be coming back to Fort Greene for this reading. When I had the page proofs, I took them to the cafe across the street, and dreamt that one day I’d be reading at Greenlight. I went in and bought a copy of Eloquent Rage by Dr Brittany Cooper and a gift paperback of Dr bell hooks’s classic, All About Love. My heart is so excited to soon stand in that place with all of you!
Greenlight welcomes Jessie Morgan-Owens to present her new book Girl in Black and White. 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. During a sold-out abolitionist lecture series, Senator Charles Sumner paraded Mary in front of rapt audiences as evidence that slavery knew no bounds. 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 restores Mary’s story to history and uncovers a dramatic narrative of travels along the Underground Railroad, relationships tested by oppression, and the struggles of life after emancipation. Morgan-Owens presents her book in conversation with Alexis Coe, historian and author of Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis.
I’ll be at the Central Library, sponsored by the African American Department.
The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the book for sale at a book signing following the program. Reserve your copy!
Checking in with my colleagues at Bard Early College Baltimore for a private event and workshop.
All public programs at the National Archives are free, and many are streamed live online via the National Archives’ YouTube channel. Reservations are recommended; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. (However, there are 290 seats in this gorgeous hall, so please, come fill them up! )
The doors to the building will open 45 minutes prior to the start of the program. Use the Special Events entrance on the corner of Constitution Avenue and 7th Street, NW. Click here for more information on getting to the National Archives and parking.
First stop on the book tour is at the most famous bookstore in DC! I’m trilled to be reading here. This event is free to attend with no reservation required. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. My family will be there in force, so you will have to fight them for the front row!
CSpan should be broadcasting, FYI!
Here’s their elegant summary of the book: “In an 1855 address to abolitionists, Senator Charles Sumner presented a seven-year-old freed slave girl who looked white. The girl, Mary Mildred Williams, soon became the poster child for the abolitionist movement. In this groundbreaking account, Morgan-Owens, dean of studies at New Orleans’s Bard Early College, tells the long-overlooked story of Williams’s life. Focusing on events before and after Emancipation, Morgan-Owens both shifts the usual white perspective of the era to keep the Black protagonists in view and uses Williams’s experience to trace the fraught racial politics of abolitionism in which skin color could dictate the level of white sympathy.”
Join us for the first reading of the spring 2019 season of Blood Jet Poetry Series, which will be a prose night featuring Jessie Morgan-Owens. Second feature TBA.
Host Tom Andes, a fellow No Name writing group and lifelong friend!
Launch Party!
