Albino brothers from franklin county

As the s rolled around, circuses started to explode on the American entertainment scene. Forget radio, TV, or movies - they weren't a thing yet.

In the early s, albino African-American brothers George and Willie Muse were stolen from their home in Truevine and turned into circus performers. No one had ever been able to get the true story of what happened, Macy was told. Furthermore, one of the brothers was still alive at the time. She spent nearly three years researching records in courthouses and online, often with help from friends and former newspaper colleagues. George and Willie Muse, two albino African-American brothers from Franklin County, were either kidnapped by the circus or sold into show business and were exploited for years as they toured the country in sideshows. After being reunited with her sons in after a year search, Harriet sued Ringling Brothers to earn fair wages for George and Willie. By most accounts, the Muse brothers enjoyed the rest of their circus career.

Albino brothers from franklin county

P eople looked at the Muse Brothers, Georgie and Willie, and saw something different. Some saw objects of pity. Some saw objects of ridicule. Some saw dollar signs. Author and former Roanoke Times journalist Beth Macy Factory Man explores the harrowing story of two albino African American brothers, the children of a sharecropping single mother, from rural Franklin County. Between and , the circus was the most dominant form of entertainment in the United States. The brothers had no say in their working conditions, employers, or compensation. The court documents survive in the archives of the Library of Virginia and were utilized by the author for her book, Truevine. Ultimately, their Richmond petitions failed due to a technicality. In his haste to file, their lawyer referred to the defendant, Ringling Brothers, as a corporation.

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I n October , the circus came to Roanoke, Virginia. It was a vast affair. There were four locomotives, railcars, 1, people, five rings, six stages, elephants and high-wire acts. Among the attractions arriving in town were two albino African-American men called George and Willie Muse, famous across the United States as Eko and Iko, the sheepheaded cannibals from Ecuador. The 13th amendment to the US constitution abolished slavery in , but in the s the south was at the height of Jim Crow segregation laws. As a result, supposedly liberated African Americans were poor, in effect disenfranchised, often uneducated, and much more likely than white people to be in jail.

As the s rolled around, circuses started to explode on the American entertainment scene. Forget radio, TV, or movies - they weren't a thing yet. Instead, it was all about the thrill of insane acrobatics, wild animals, and exciting performances that took over people's imaginations. These spectacles were a major event and an eagerly anticipated break, particularly in remote and rural areas where life could be repetitive and dull. For many people at this time, their knowledge of different cultures or unusual creatures existed primarily within stories told around fireplaces or articles read under candlelight. But when the big top rolled into town, it brought pieces of the world to their doorsteps. It didn't matter who or where you came from; almost everyone was swept up by the magic. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were marked by dramatic changes on every continent. Europe saw empires teetering precariously due to major political upheavals while the Industrial Revolution rattled established new norms and ways of life. Asia, too, wasn't untouched by this wave of transformation, as ancient dynasties grappled with burgeoning nationalism and modernization forces.

Albino brothers from franklin county

I n October , the circus came to Roanoke, Virginia. It was a vast affair. There were four locomotives, railcars, 1, people, five rings, six stages, elephants and high-wire acts. Among the attractions arriving in town were two albino African-American men called George and Willie Muse, famous across the United States as Eko and Iko, the sheepheaded cannibals from Ecuador. The 13th amendment to the US constitution abolished slavery in , but in the s the south was at the height of Jim Crow segregation laws. As a result, supposedly liberated African Americans were poor, in effect disenfranchised, often uneducated, and much more likely than white people to be in jail. The result was slavery by another name. Circusgoers were used to seeing black men posing as wild men in cages, where they would pretend to subsist on raw meat and bit the heads off chickens and snakes. Eko and Iko offered something different, if no less racist.

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During this period, a new force in the circus world emerged: the Ringling Bros. In his last years, Macy relates, Willie would straighten the picture of his mother in a silver frame near the foot of his bed, and recall with with pride how she had stood up to the cops and circus bigwigs when she came to reclaim her sons in When she passed away in , she had bought a piece of land in Franklin County. The Muse brothers had been encouraged to grow their hair into vast dreadlocks that they would tuck into enormous caps and then release before gawping punters. Albinism is a congenital disorder more common among people of African descent than white Europeans — one in 10, of the former is born albino, compared with one in 36, of the latter. The brothers had been, her lawyer argued, held against their will, and turned into slaves. Sign up! She refused all requests by reporters and historians to interview Willie about his sideshow experiences. It is a genuine epitaph from a man who, after a life full of incredible challenges and against all odds, ultimately got the final say. This morbid and degrading spectacle revealed that Heth was approximately 80 years old. Glass blowers at work alongside taxidermists and phrenologists were pretty common sights. She was, clearly, an extraordinary woman: three days after she faced down the circus proprietors and city cops in that sideshow tent and reclaimed her sons, she started legal proceedings against the Ringling Brothers and Shelton. Shelton was looking for sideshow attractions as lucrative as the conjoined twins from Thailand who became the act Chang and Eng, or the dwarf brothers from Ohio, whom circus showman PT Barnum called the Wild Men of Borneo. Expand full comment Reply Share. In reality, the figure was a carefully sculpted gypsum statue, secretly buried and later 'unearthed' to create a sensation.

Beth Macy worked doggedly for year to get people to open up to her about the lives of George and Willie Muse.

Macy is pleased that her book is helping give a remedial education in American history to Americans, among them, she tells me, kids at a juvenile detention centre in Roanoke. Undeterred by the presence of law enforcement, she took a defiant stand and insisted that she would not leave without her boys. This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Willie managed to outlive everybody who had exploited him, including the only person he ever hated — Shelton. It could have been just another day in , but for the Muse family, it was the day that would turn their world upside down. It is a genuine epitaph from a man who, after a life full of incredible challenges and against all odds, ultimately got the final say. It was almost as if, she tells me, Americans wanted to make their country as segregated as it was in the Jim Crow south. Most Popular. Still, Saunders never let Macy meet her great-uncle. For that, he spun a tale around her, claiming she was years old and had been the nurse to none other than George Washington, America's first president. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were marked by dramatic changes on every continent.