by Beth Macy
Advance press in the Roanoke Times in October 1927 noted that 1,600 people worked for the circus, featuring the “sacred white elephant of Burma” and five rings—and George and Willie Muse.
(Courtesy of Byron Penick)
The 1927 route for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, the first time it came through Roanoke, Virginia, where the Muse family lived.
(Courtesy of the Circus World Museum)
Harriett Muse (then Cooke) took out a notice in Billboard magazine as she searched for her sons, who’d then been missing for several months.
(From the collection of the author)
Roanoke street photographer George Davis took this photograph shortly after Willie (left) and George Muse were reunited with their mother in October 1927.
(Courtesy of Frank Ewald)
“They were called forth and recognized their mother almost at the same instant she realized they were her long-missing children,” the Roanoke Times wrote in its first story of the reunion in October 1927.
(Copyright Roanoke Times, reprinted by permission)
“With keen business acumen [the circus managers] purchased the two albinos, placing them in a side show under the alluring names of Eko and Iko,” said a Roanoke Times account shortly after their reunion with relatives in October 1927.
(Copyright Roanoke Times, reprinted by permission)
The cause of George and Willie Muse’s stepfather’s death was listed as “homicidal,” and his remains were immediately transported to the “Pin Hook” (or Penhook, as it’s now known) area near Truevine.
(Courtesy of Virginia Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1912–2014)
The Roanoke klavern of the KKK, the largest in the state, was documented by street photographer George Davis in 1931.
(Courtesy of the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Library)
An employment card for Willie Muse in 1937 and 1938.
(Courtesy of the Circus World Museum)
Circus sideshow manager Candy Shelton worked sixty-seven days for Al G. Barnes Circus during the tumultuous, strike-filled year of 1938.
(Courtesy of the Circus World Museum)
In the Associated Press’s account of Harriett Muse’s lawsuit against the circus, Harriett conceded she had initially “contracted to let the boys leave with a man named Stokes,” but Muse descendants pointed out the paper’s long-standing racist coverage of the black community and the fact that Willie Muse himself always declared they were “stolen” from the beginning.
(Copyright Roanoke Times, reprinted by permission)
Pete Kortes (under the Hotel Paradise sign, wearing glasses and with a cigarette) usually took his sideshow to Hawaii and other tropical locations during the circus off-season. George Muse is pictured third from the left in the nearest row, between Barney Nelson and Athelia.
George and Willie Muse (at left, George has his arm on his brother’s shoulder) looked back fondly on the tail end of their careers with Pete Kortes Sideshow, pictured here with the group in the late 1940s in Hawaii.
(Courtesy of Bob Blackmar)
George and Willie Muse (back row, fourth and fifth from the left) in a group photo of the Conklin Shows sideshow from the 1950s.
(Courtesy of the North American Carnival Museum & Archives)
Warren Messick’s obituary as it ran in the Roanoke World-News in 1962.
(Copyright Roanoke Times, reprinted by permission.)
Tobacco is still a cash crop in Franklin County, Virginia, though not as important or as widely grown as it once was.
(Photograph by Beth Macy)
“I knew Iko and Eko, yes,” said Myrtle Phanelson, ninety-seven at the time of our interview. “One did all the talking, and the other one would just sit and listen,” she told me in 2015.
(Photograph by Beth Macy)
Jason Banks holds a birthday cake at the bedside of his great-great uncle Willie Muse a few years before Willie’s death in 2001.
(Courtesy of Nancy Saunders)
Nancy Saunders regularly visits the grave of her uncle Willie Muse at C. C. Williams Memorial Park in Roanoke, Virginia. When he died in 2001, she had Willie’s marker inscribed with his favorite saying: “God is good to me.”
(Photograph by Beth Macy, 2015)
Acknowledgments
This book began with a picture of George and Willie Muse posted about two years ago on Facebook, of all things. I was midway through a shared bottle of wine on a Friday night when I spotted a familiar, circa-1927 picture shared by my inimitable friend Mim Young, a lifelong circus aficionada. The enthusiastic response to Mim’s post gave me my first, albeit flushed, idea that just maybe I could resurrect the Roanoke Times newspaper series I’d cowritten in 2001 and, if enough new material could be gathered, turn it into a book. It helped immeasurably that my former newspaper cowriter, Jen McCaffery, had carted her sixteen-pound box of Muse files around with her through several moves to multiple cities, always hoping in the back of her mind that one of us would write that book. Jen, I will forever owe you for sending that box to me, plus postage!
My agent, Peter McGuigan, was his usual cheerful, opinionated, and bulldogging self throughout the arc of this project. A hearty thanks to Peter and the entire team at Foundry Literary + Media, especially Bret Witter, Kirsten Neuhaus, Jessica Regel, Richie Kern, and Matt Wise; and to Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein in London.
I remain so lucky to get to work with editor John Parsley, who has now shepherded two of my books into print—and made them smoother, more nuanced, and ultimately more honest. Thanks also to my Macmillan editor, Georgina Morley, and to all my stalwart champions at Little, Brown and Company, including Malin von Euler-Hogan, Miriam Parker, Sabrina Callahan, Alyssa Persons, Sarah Haugen, Fiona Brown, Reagan Arthur, Craig Young, and Karen Torres. Copyeditor Deborah P. Jacobs and production editor Pamela Marshall were eagle-eyed and diligent, and I’m so grateful this book was in their care.
There’s no chapter in this book that doesn’t owe some fact-finding debt to my estimable cadre of librarians, researchers, historians, and court-records sleuths. Librarians are so much cleverer, cooler, and cheerfully subversive than they get credit for, and they are my favorite tribe, especially razor-sharp Piper Cumbo at Roanoke College and the amazingly resourceful staffs of the Virginia Room at the Roanoke City Library, and of that system’s very special Gainsboro branch. Special thanks for the research assistance of Pat Ross of the Bassett Historical Center; Diane Adkins of the Pittsylvania County Public Library; Franklin County genealogist Beverly Merritt; Linda Stanley at the Franklin County Historical Society; retired journalist and all-around historical stickler George Kegley; Harrison Museum of African American Culture director Charles Price; Aiesha (the intern!) Krause-Lee at the College of William and Mary; and historian John Kern.
Title examiner and court-records researcher Betsy Biesenbach dedicated herself to this project as if it were her own, as did Belinda Harris, who spent many weekends combing through newspaper archives. Others who helped me navigate tricky subjects included Evalyn Chapman, Mark and Elizabeth Jamison, Greg Renoff, Andy Erlich, Gladys Hairston, Jane Nicholas, Bev Fitzpatrick, Randy Abbott, Virgil Goode, Randy Abbott, the late Harvey Lutins, and Roddy Moore and Vaughan Webb of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College. Editor/historian Rand Dotson’s amazing Roanoke, Virginia, 1882–1912: Magic City of the New South guided much of my Jim Crow–era research. Sarah Baumgardner cheerfully plunged into dusty map archives at the Western Virginia Water Authority, as did Dan Webb at the City of Roanoke. Kate and Kamran Khalilian made their home my Richmond bureau, and Kate scoured archives at the Library of Virginia when I couldn’t make the trek.
Mary Bishop’s coverage of black Roanoke history for the Roanoke Times schooled me countless times, and the impact of her almost three decades of journalistic counsel is palpable an every page of this book.
Dr. Reginald Shareef coached me and shared important insights about growing up in segregated Roanoke, as d
id Sarah Showalter, Willie Mae Ingram, ace journalist JoAnne Poindexter, Lawrence Mitchell, and the late A. L. Holland. Thanks to Regina “Sweet Sue” Peeks, I will never drive past a vacant urban lot again without imagining the racist parrots she recalled—a reminder that archives and documents only carry you so far: nothing beats strangers sharing their memories and desires. Nothing. To Janet Johnson, Mabel Pullen, Johnny Angell, J. Harry Woody, and A. J. Reeves in Truevine: God bless you a double portion.
Leading my own version of a circus backyard was the endlessly fascinating Al Stencell, whose love of sideshow history is as unparalleled as his colorful stories. I’m equally grateful to circus historians Dick Flint, Warren Raymond, Bob Blackmar, Bob Bogdan, Bernth Lindfors, Fred Pfening III, LaVahn Hoh, Glenn Charron, and Fred Dahlinger, and to historical costume expert Joshua Bond. Pete Shrake at the Circus World Museum, in Baraboo, was especially helpful, as were Maureen Brunsdale and Mark Schmitt at the Milner Library’s Circus and Allied Arts collection at Illinois State University; and Kelly Zacovic, Heidi Taylor, and Howard Tibbals of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, in Sarasota. My research into British sideshows was greatly aided by Clare Moore and her research at the Stoole-Tott collection of the University of California–Santa Barbara library; Matthew Neill at the National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield, England; and John Woolf.
Lawyers who helped search for case files and/or protected me from misinterpreting them included Paul Lombardo, V. Anne Edenfield, Lori Lord, Nick Leitch, and retired circuit court judges Cliff Weckstein and Diane Strickland.
The month I spent at the MacDowell Colony was crucial to the completion of this book, especially the early feedback from other fellows. Support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities boosted my ability to delve into archives near and far; I’m especially grateful to David Bearinger, Jeanne Siler, Jane Kulow, Rob Vaughn, Tucker Lemon, and Margot Lee Shetterly.
For traversing journalism challenges, I’m obliged to my all-star advisory team of Carole Tarrant, Martha Bebinger, Doug Pardue, Annie Jacobsen, Roland Lazenby, Lisa Mullins, Rob Freis, Sue Lindsey, Frosty Landon, Gary Knight, Rob Lunsford, Josh Meltzer, Stephanie Klein-Davis, Ralph Berrier Jr., Dr. Frank Ochberg, Andrea Pitzer, Anna Quindlen, Mary Bishop, Mike Hudson, Laurie Hoffman, Joana Gorjao Henriques, Bill Steiden, Rich and Margaret Martin, and Bob and Nancy Giles.
On the home front, I’d like to thank Will Landon (and apologize for my inability to write with his near-constant whistling), Max Landon, Chloe Landon, Barbara Landon, and Chris Landon; my mom, Sarah Macy Slack, for teaching me to love books; my sister, Terry Vigus, for her dedication to Mom; tireless support from Jean and Scott Whitaker, Lee and Nancy Coleman, Angela Charlton, Sharon Rapoport, Dina and Reggie Bennett, Cheri Storms and Joe Loughmiller, Chris and Connie Henson, Bonny Branch, Frances and Lee West, Libba Wolfe, Dotsy Clifton, Emily and Elizabeth Perkins, and Lezlie and Keno Snyder at Parkway Brewing; and Tom Landon, who steers everything through, steadily, from the idea’s first flush to the final word.
And for never failing to remind me that I didn’t want to be “just another white person stirring up shit,” my deepest regards go to Nancy Saunders. While you didn’t exactly invite me into Dot’s kitchen, you also never quite kicked me out. For that and for your vast mother wisdom about so many things, I will always be in your debt.
About the Author
BETH MACY writes about outsiders and underdogs, and she is the author of the New York Times bestseller Factory Man. Her work has appeared in national magazines and newspapers and the Roanoke Times. Her reporting has won more than a dozen national awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard and a Lukas Prize.
ALSO BY BETH MACY
Factory Man
Notes
Prologue. I Am the True Vine
Interviews: Diane Hayes, A. J. Reeves, Nancy Saunders, Dot Brown, Rand Dotson
Tobacco growing in Virginia’s piedmont in nineteenth century: Outlined in Samuel C. Shelton’s “The Culture and Management of Tobacco,” Southern Planter (April 1861): 209–218.
Sharecropping life: Gleaned from Tom Landenburg’s “The African-American as Sharecropper,” http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit6_7.pdf, and in Marshall Wingfield’s Franklin County: A History (Berryville, VA: Chesapeake Book Co., 1964).
“whole race trying to go to school”: Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1907), http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/washing.html.
Early Lucy Addison history: From an undated history of African-American schools in Roanoke, on file at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, museum annex. The report also describes a two-room building, “the earliest colored school,” called Old Lick School, a log structure opened in 1872.
Lucy Addison’s teaching Oliver Hill: Beth Macy, “She Touched on Us to Eternity,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 5, 2006.
Delayed literacy among black sharecroppers: From 1870 Franklin County census figures culled in Audrey Dudley and Diane Hayes, eds., Oh, Master (six-volume set of local African-American history), self-published in 2002, held at Franklin County Historical Society: four of thirty-three blacks with the surname Muse could read and write; three of twenty resident blacks with the surname Dickenson/Dickerson (Harriett’s maiden name) could read and write.
Harriett Muse’s protective nature: Author interviews, Nancy Saunders, June 2, 2014, and Nancy Saunders and Dot Brown, April 2001.
First school in Truevine: Author interview, A. J. Reeves, Sept. 15, 2014.
Freak hunting, as exemplified by a typical ad from Billboard: “WANTED—Freaks, Curiosities for Pit Show… fat man, lady midget, glass blower, magician, anything suitable for high-class Pit Show,” Sept. 13, 1919.
Freak-hunting ad: Billboard, April 25, 1914.
Scant evidence to prove lynch-mob victims guilty of 1890 Rocky Mount arson: The black-owned Richmond Planet opined that the case “tells in no uncertain tones the prejudiced conditions existing in that community, and makes one wish in vain for the resurrection of those human beings hanged for a crime which possibly they never committed,” Dec. 20, 1890.
Bird Woods’s last words: Daily Virginian, Aug. 23, 1890.
Thomas Smith’s lynching in 1893: Details from Rand Dotson’s “Race and Violence in Urbanizing Appalachia: The Roanoke Riot of 1893,” and Bruce Stewart’s Blood in the Hills (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Also recounted in Suzanne Lebsock’s A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).
eighth known lynching in southwest Virginia that year: Dwayne Yancey, “‘And the Harvest of Blood Commenced,’” Roanoke Times, Sept. 20, 1993.
Chapter One. Sit Down and Shut Up
Interviews: Richard L. Chubb, Reginald Shareef, Nancy Saunders, Dot Brown, Louise Burrell, Brian Sieveking, Frank Ewald, Frosty Landon
Black mothers in Roanoke wouldn’t let children pick up odd jobs at the circus: Author interview, Richard L. Chubb, Oct. 16, 2014.
Photography book with brothers’ picture: Reginald Shareef’s The Roanoke Valley’s African American Heritage: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning, 1996), 185.
“Your uncles eat raw meat!”: Author interview, Nancy Saunders and Dot Brown, April 2001.
double curse of differentness: Author interview, Louise Burrell, talking about her albino mother, Sept. 22, 2014.
Nancy Saunders’s request to remove picture of brothers from photo exhibit: Author interview, Frank Ewald, Sept. 18, 2014.
Young Roanoker’s fascination with brothers: Author interview, Brian Sieveking, Sept. 2, 2014.
Brothers featured in genetics book: Amram Scheinfeld, You and Heredity (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1939), 147.
Author’s initial article on Nancy Saunders and her restaurant: Beth Macy, “Made with Love for Twelve Years Now, Customers Have Been Coming Back for the Goody Shop’s Southern Cooking,” Roanoke Times, Jan. 9, 1991.
“one exceptionally gu
arded family”: Author interview, Reginald Shareef, Sept. 7, 2014.
Roanoke Times’ refusal to print wedding announcements for black brides: Author interview, Frosty Landon, former editorial-page editor, Oct. 13, 2014.
“Nobody can write about Freaks”: Leslie Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (New York: Anchor, 1978), 171.
Chapter Two. White Peoples Is Hateful
Interviews: Johnny Angell, Diane Hayes, Janet Johnson, A. J. Reeves, Andrew Baskin, Thelma Muse Lee
Life of twentieth-century sharecropper: Author interview, Johnny Angell, Franklin County tobacco farmer, Oct. 14, 2014.
Connection between slavery and lingering black poverty and family structure: “It is true that many slaves were involved in social units that looked like nuclear families, but these were largely reproductive associations based on fragile male-female relationships,” Patterson told journalist Craig Lambert in “The Caribbean Zola,” Harvard Magazine (November–December 2014). “Parents had no custodial claims on their children, who at any time could be sold away from them. To call these units ‘families,’ as revisionist historians have done, is a historical and sociological travesty.”
Blacks’ reluctance to discuss slavery: Author interview, Diane Hayes, Oct. 22, 2014. Hayes and Audrey Dudley spent years compiling records on African Americans in Franklin County for a six-volume set they self-published called Oh, Master—named not for the slave owners but as a tribute to God. “They shouldn’t have taught those black people to pray because praying’s what got them out of slavery,” Dudley told Hayes as they were working on the series.