Bibliograph

Truevine, two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest : a true story of the Jim Crow South, Beth Macy

Type

Label

Truevine, two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest : a true story of the Jim Crow South, Beth Macy

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references

resource.biographical

collective biography

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Truevine

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Beth Macy

Sub title

two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest : a true story of the Jim Crow South

Summary

The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even 'Ambassadors from Mars.' Back home, their mother never accepted that they were 'gone' and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home?

Target audience

adult

Classification