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Girl in Black
and White
by Jessie Morgan-Owens
c.2019, W.W. Norton
$27.95 / $36.95 Canada
324 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Water stains and tattered edges.
It was a shame that that happened to the picture you found,
though those wounds give it dignity. You have no idea who’s
in the snapshot; you just know that someone wanted to
remember a moment in time – or, as in the new book
Girl in Black and White by Jessie Morgan-Owens,
someone wanted to spark change.
If you didn’t know the whole story behind the daguerreotype,
you would think it was just an image of a charming,
anonymous little girl, circa 1855.
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And you’d be half right.
Its story starts in 1808 when Virginia widow Conney Cornwell
dealt with a thorny issue: her 15-year-old daughter, Kitty,
became pregnant by one of Conney’s slaves and, ignoring
possible ruination of the family’s reputation, Conney kept
the baby they named John. Though he was technically free due
to matrilineal laws, John was raised in the slave quarters
by Conney’s slave, “Prue,” until he was 16.
In 1825, when Conney fell ill, she did something that she
hoped would ultimately protect Prue from enduring the
heartbreak of separation from family: Conney left Prue to
John in her will. Also included were Prue’s children and
future grandchildren – and there would be many, most
fathered by white men of power.
The problem was that John’s whereabouts were unknown when
Conney died, and there was a battle for her estate; in the
meantime, Prue gave birth to more children, as did her
children. Through complicated circumstances, one of them,
Prue’s very light-skinned granddaughter, eventually caught
the eye of anti-slavery Massachusetts Senator Charles
Sumner, who knew that white audiences would be interested in
her story and the horrors that might befall her as a black
child who looked white. He wanted to show her to his
abolitionist supporters and to opponents.
And so Sumner arranged a portrait session with a little girl
called Mary…
Much as you’ll be interested in Mary’s story, too,
Girl in Black and White may be a challenging way to get
it.
While it’s good that a major chunk of the first part of this
book is a Genesis-like account of begetting and ancestry,
that soon devolves into court cases and courtroom wranglings
that may be hard to follow for all but the most legal-minded
readers. Author Jessie Morgan-Owens valiantly offers some
help with this and she includes plenty of fascinating
side-stories on mid-1800s culture, photography, abolition,
and attitudes, but there’s still a lot to take in,
especially if you’re not prepared for it.
Take that as fair warning because, despite its depth, you’ll
have a hard time tearing yourself away from the small
stories Morgan-Owens offers inside the larger account: tales
of everyday life, helpful celebrities, and Mary’s final days
in what may have been a “’Boston Marriage.’”
Perhaps the best advice is to give yourself plenty of time
to digest and plenty of room to back-page while reading
Girl in Black and White. Do that, and you’ll be fine;
without space to contemplate, though, it may leave your
brain a little tattered.
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