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.
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 guarded 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.
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.
Sabotage of recording about slavery at Colonial Williamsburg: Michael S. Durham, “The Word Is Slaves: A Trip into Black History,” American Heritage Journal (April 1992).
“about the same as getting into paradise”: Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1907), 7, http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/washing.html.
Slave narrative of Armistead Reeves: Recounted by Janet Johnson to author, Nov. 11, 2013, and again by his grandson A. J. Reeves, Sept. 15, 2014.
How sharecroppers were often cheated out of pay: Jay R. Mandle, The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation Economy After the Civil War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978), 25.
Dishonesty of farmers on “settling-day”: Among the complaints logged in Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands: Virginia, Rocky Mount, Letters Sent, 1866–1868, pp. 45–48, compiled by U.S. National Archives and Record Service [n.d.]: A former slave was starving with her three children and deemed she was “better off before freedom”; a former slave trader told blacks in the region not to vote, then whites tried to incite blacks to hang him (they would have been blamed for the riots); and several complaints from sharecroppers who didn’t get paid at all, 182.
no choice but to return: Ibid., 48. In some cases, interest rates were as high as 200 percent, according to Richard Wormser, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003), 36.
only a fool would question the landlord’s math: Andrew Baskin, author interview, Oct. 28, 2014. Baskin also coauthored Studies in the Local History of Slavery: Essays Prepared for the Booker T. Washington National Monument (Ferrum, VA: Ferrum College, 1978).
Violence against sharecroppers questioning landlord’s accounting: Theodore Rosengarten’s All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
“I find an inclination”: Freedmen’s Bureau Records, p. 200, as noted on the copy held at Franklin County Library, Rocky Mount, VA.
“It was the onliest way we had to make money”: Author interview, Thelma Muse Lee, Sept. 15, 2014.
Muse and Dickerson descendants in Franklin County: Elizabeth Muse and Martha Dickerson/Dickinson/Dickenson (spellings varied) were prominent slave owners in the region. Harriett Dickerson Muse may have been born on Dickerson land. (Her parents were Edmund and Martha Dickerson, according to her Franklin County marriage license.) Ex-slaves by the last names Muse, Finney, and Pullen purchased farm-working equipment from Martha Dickerson in 1867, according to a slave inventory abstract compiled for Audrey Dudley and Diane Hayes, eds., Oh, Master (self-published, 2002), suggesting that they lived near one another.
Remarkable story of former slave Samuel Walker: Bill Archer, “Samuel Walker: Slave, Freedman, and Pensioner, 1842–1933,” Virginia Cavalcade (Winter 2001).
Railroad presence in West Virginia coalfields: Ronald Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian: The Migration of Southern Blacks to the Central Appalachian Coalfields,” Journal of Southern History 55, no. 1 (1989): 77–102.
Black men’s eagerness to join cash economy: Wormser, Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, 58.
Documentation of Cabell Muse’s first paid work alongside other Truevine natives: 1900 U.S. Census figures: Cabell/Calvin Muse (first-name spelling varied; he was sometimes even listed as Calbert) “works on track” in Rock, WV, and shared a household with Franklin County–born blacks, including N. H. Pullen (Charles Pullen’s grandfather), William Belcher, and Patrick Payne. A. J. Reeves’s father, Robert Reeves, was living with William Muse and Jack Hopkins in the same locality and working as a blacksmith.
The hard labor of building railroad track: Sheree Scarborough, African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014), 11.
Railroad-camp violence: “Murdered by Tramps: Special Policeman and Telegraph Operator Shot in N. & W. Yards,” Washington Post, July 27, 1904.
Masterless men: Wormser, Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, 54.
Du Bois’s description of “race feud”: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover, 1994), 23, 65.
black people lacked the necessary intelligence: Baskin, Studies in the Local History of Slavery, 94.
Treatment of blacks as subhuman: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 235.
Sad parallel story of Ota Benga: Pamela Newkirk, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (New York: Amistad, 2015). The story is also told by Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume in Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992).
National media’s racist coverage of Ota Benga: Mitch Keller, “The Scandal at the Zoo,” New York Times, Aug. 6, 2006.
Ota Benga’s suicide: Mike Hudson, “The Man They Put in the Zoo,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 7, 1993.
“about as near to nowhere”: Booker T. Washington, An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington: The Story of My Life and Work (Atlanta: J. L. Nichols, 1901), 15.
Interviews: Rand Dotson, A. L. Holland, Bev Fitzpatrick, Oliver Hill, Willie Mae Ingram, Regina “Sweet Sue” Holmes Peeks
The inception of Roanoke: Roanoke’s growth was fastest between 1880 and 1890, according to Rand Dotson, Roanoke, Virginia, 1882–1912: Magic City of the New South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), 105.
How Norfolk and Western Railway ended up in Roanoke: Ibid., 15.
Origin of city’s name: The name Roanoke comes from the American Indian word rawrenoc, meaning “shell money,” from Beth Macy, “What’s in a Name?,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 21, 2002.
How Roanoke businesses exploited state’s coal deposits: New York Times, Aug. 27, 1883.
Growing pains in Roanoke: Clare White, Roanoke: 1740–1982 (Roanoke, VA: Roanoke Valley Historical Society, 1982), 87.
Early Roanoke drinking culture: Dotson, Roanoke, Virginia, 21.
“Big Lick to Bigger Lick”: Ibid., 232.
Ridiculing of country people in Roanoke’s early days: Ibid., 115.
Racism in early Roanoke: Ibid., 23.
“Roanoke was incredibly hostile to African Americans”: Author interview, Rand Dotson, Oct. 2, 2014.
Cabell Muse’s first job in Roanoke: Water job listed on Cabell (spelled Cabble) Muse’s World War I draft registration card; labor details confirmed by contemporary George Davis photos of the Roanoke Water Company, now part of the Western Virginia Water Authority.
Early 1900s restriction of black voting: Ben Beagle, “The 1902 Constitution: A Bleak Era for Blacks,” Roanoke Times, special series reprint on race, “Black Virginia: Progress, Poverty & Paradox,” 1984. The number of African Americans qualified to vote dropped from 147,000 to 21,000 immediately.
The Reverend R. R. Jones’s escape from Roanoke and reaction in black press: Richmond Planet, as quoted in Roanoke Times, April 6, 1904.
Racist sentiments in wake of Shields case: Between 1880 and 1930, twenty-four blacks were lynched in southwest Virginia alone, according to a chart compiled by historian John Kern, Kern Collection, Virginia Room, Roanoke City Library.
Roanoke ordinance codifies housing segregation: Naomi A. Mattos, “Segregation by Custom Versus Segregation by Law, 1910–1917, City of Roanoke,” written for Roanoke Regional Preservation Office, 2005; on file with Kern Collection.
Summary of Jim Crow laws and their impact from Richmond Planet editor: Ann Field Alexander, Race Man: The Rise and Fall of the “Fighting Editor” John Mitchell Jr. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 173.
National resurgence of Ku Klux Klan: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 192.
Blues song about marrying a railroad man: “Berta, Berta,” quoted in August Wilson, The Piano Lesson (New York: Penguin, 1990), 40.
Memory of early black migration pattern to Roanoke: Author interview, A. L. Holland, Nov. 11, 2014, and cited in Sheree Scarborough’s African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014).
Jim Crow humiliations for black workers in railroad work camps: Mason Scott, worker, interview by historian Michael A. Cooke, March 16, 1991, in Cooke, “Race Relations in Montgomery County, Virginia, 1870–1990,” Journals of the Appalachian Studies Association (March 1992).
How Jordan’s Alley got its name: In 1882 a man named John N. Jordan bought a rooming house owned by the son of early Roanoke developer Ferdinand Rorer. It had a bar that made the adjoining narrow alleyway a popular thoroughfare and earned the nickname Jordan’s Alley. Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 97.
Description of rail yard’s impact on Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Bev Fitzpatrick, Virginia Museum of Transportation executive director, on 1920s-era roundhouse conditions, Aug. 11, 2015. The roundhouse was later moved westward to Shaffer’s Crossing.
Description of Muses’ block in Jordan’s Alley: Drawn from a 1929 Appraisal Map, Office of City Engineer, Sheet No. 111, on file at Roanoke City Hall.
Dr. I. D. Burrell’s death: Mary Bishop, “A History of Strength,” Roanoke Times, April 25, 1993.
Oliver Hill’s description of segregated black school conditions: Beth Macy, “She Touched on Us to Eternity,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 5, 2006.
Hill’s description of threatened racial violence: Jonathan K. Stubbs, ed., The Big Bang: Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond: The Autobiography of Oliver W. Hill, Sr. (Winter Park, FL: Four-G, 2000), 34.
Du Bois’s “Talented Tenth”: Du Bois believed a black man had a one-in-ten chance of becoming a leader but needed classical education to reach full potential, in contrast to the industrial education and trades proposed by Booker T. Washington. “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” he wrote in “The Talented Tenth,” September 1903: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-talented-tenth/.
Living conditions in Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Willie Mae Ingram, Nov. 11, 2014.
Family life in Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Regina “Sweet Sue” Holmes Peeks, Nov. 11, 2014.
Poverty in Roanoke’s West End today: Hurt Park Elementary statistics at Virginia Department of Education, Office of School Nutrition Programs, as of October 2014: http://www.pen.k12.va.us/support/nutrition/statistics/free_reduced_eligibility/2014-2015/schools/frpe_sch_report_sy2014-15.pdf.
Interviews: Warren Raymond, Howard Tibbals, Richard Dillard, Joshua Bond, Bonnie LeRoy, Robert Bogdan, Al Stencell, Fred Dahlinger
Freaks as “aristocrats”: Patricia Bosworth’s Diane Arbus: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 177.
Description of sideshow exhibits: Richard W. Flint, “Promoting Peerless Prodigies ‘To the Curious,’” in Kristin L. Spangenberg and Deborah W. Walk, eds., The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithographing Company (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 2011), 48–54.
Lew Graham’s definition of a good freak act: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 236.
Sideshow pecking order: Author interview, Warren Raymond, Feb. 26, 2015.
a hyperbolic spiel: A pitchman, also known as a talker but never a barker, would deliver the pitch, according to a pamphlet written by retired showman Joe McKennon, Circus Lingo (Sarasota, FL: Carnival Publishers of Sarasota, 1980), my go-to source for circus slang throughout this book.
“The brothers were descended from monkeys”: As recounted in Bradna, Big Top, 237.
“Two Ecuador white savages”: How Lee Graham first spun the Muse brothers’ act, “Lew Graham Made One of Finds of His Career,” Billboard, July 27, 1922.
“All for the insignificant sum”: Felix Isman, Weber and Fields: Their Tribulations, Triumphs and Their Associates (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924).
Diane Arbus’s portrayal of sideshow subjects: Arbus’s photograph of Jack Dracula was not printed in the magazine, but the final image, selected as AR00570, is in the holdings of the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, “Jack Dracula, the Marked Man, N.Y.C.,” available at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arbus-jack-dracula-in-a-bar-nyc-al00191/text-summary.
Howard Tibbals’s circus collection: Billy Cox, “Howard Tibbals and the Huge Miniature Circus,” Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune, Jan. 19, 2012.
“I hate sideshows”: Author interview, Howard Tibbals, Dec. 3, 2014.
James Baldwin on freaks: “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” in Toni Morrison, ed., James Baldwin: Collected Essays (New York: Library of America, 1998). Also published in James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Essays, 1948–1985 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985).
“the freaks are the good people!”: Author interview, Richard Dillard, Nov. 24, 2014.
Freak pride “in being a burden to nobody”: A. W. Stencell, Seeing Is Believing: America’s Sideshows (Toronto: ECW Press, 2002).
Zip’s supposed last words: Leslie Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (New York: Anchor, 1978).
Press agents’ influence on circus coverage: “I am a creature born of the minds of newspapermen, a genie of journalistic paste jars, a fantastic flower nurtured in a pot of printer’s ink, a product of the freedom of the press,” longtime Ringling press agent Dexter Fellows writes in his autobiography, Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), prologue.
Barnum’s controlling of Zip: Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 136.
Zip paid not to talk: Ibid., 135.
Popularity of sideshow portraits during Victorian era: Ibid., 12.
Analysis of clothing in photo of Muse brothers: Author interview, Joshua Bond, Nov. 18, 2014.
Incidence of albinism: Armand Marie Leroi, Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body (New York: Viking, 2003), 254.
Poor eyesight among albinos: Author interview, Bonnie LeRoy, June 4, 2015.
Negative views of albinos: Maryrose Cuskelly, Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011).
Possibility of Noah’s being an albino: Damon Rose, “The People Who Think Noah Had Albinism,” BBC News, April 3, 2014.
“start seeing beauty in difference”: Rick Guidotti, “From Stigma to Supermodel,” TED Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/rick_guidotti_from_stigma_to_supermodel.
Background on history of science, albinism, and early entertainment-venue draws: Taken primarily from Bogdan, Freak Show, and author interview, Bogdan, Sept. 2, 2014, and from Charles D. Martin, The White African American Body: A Cultural and Literary Exploration (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), from which the story of Jefferson’s fascination with albinism is also summarized.
Jefferson’s fascination with albinos: The first Notes on the State of Virginia was compiled in 1781, then updated in 1782 and 1783. Topics covered ranged from natural resources, religion, and economy to Jefferson’s belief that blacks and whites could not live together in a free society; later printed in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, May 1781–March 1784 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 423.
Jefferson’s suggestion that Africans had sex with apes: Joe Feagin, sociologist and race scholar, interviewed by George Yancy, “American Racism in the ‘White Frame,’” New York Times, July 27, 2015.
Charles Willson Peale’s museum: Bogdan, Freak Show, 29.
Argument for vitiligo as cure for blackness: Dr. Benjamin Rush put forward his theory in a 1796 letter to Thomas Jefferson, according to John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Barnum adding the bling: Bogdan, Freak Show, 32.
Freak hunting described: Freddie Darius Benham, “The Side Show Manager,” Circus Scrap Book 1, no. 4 (October 1929): 27–30.
Account of Unzie: As written in Frederick Drimmer’s Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities (New York: Amjon, 1973), 31.
Premature sideshow obituary: “Tragic Retreat of Human Freaks Before Picture Shows,” Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1911.
Freak-wanted ads: Billboard, March 13, 1915, and Sept. 13, 1919.
First description of brothers’ first carnival: J. A. Forbes, “Great American Shows,” Billboard, Feb. 7, 1914.
Background on Miller’s carnival: Ibid.
lot lice: Gene Plowden, Circus Press Agent: The Life and Times of Roland Butler (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1984).
Importance of lot lice: Author interview, Al Stencell, March 1, 2015.
Miller’s carnival acts described: Billboard, Aug. 1, 1914.
First description of brothers as “monkey-face men”: Fort Wayne (IN) Journal-Gazette, Sept. 4, 1914.
Typical ballyhoo for albino acts: As described in Harry Lewiston’s Freak Show Man: The Autobiography of Harry Lewiston as Told to Jerry Holtman (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968).
“Sunday boil-up”: Bogdan, Freak Show, 75.
Description of various carnival acts: “Great American Shows Will Be One of the Big Features on the Fair Grounds Next Week,” Fort Wayne (IN) Daily News, Sept. 10, 1914.
Cyclist drafted into German army: Billboard, Oct. 24, 1914.
Carnival murder: “Snake Charmer Involved in Tragedy,” Billboard, Oct. 24, 1914.
“The Southern darky is in clover this fall”: “Shows Cleaning Up,” Billboard, Nov. 11, 1916, p. 64.
Complicated lives of sideshow acts and managers: Author interview, Stencell, Nov. 14, 2014.
“A question that needs to be answered”: Author interviews (via e-mail), Fred Dahlinger, November and December 2014.
“How are the wonders ‘Eko’ and ‘Iko’ doing?”: Notice posted by C. E. Williams, New York Clipper, Oct. 3, 1914, p. 12.
Notice possibly dictated by Harriett Muse/Hattie Cooke, saying she wants her sons back: Readers’ Column, Billboard, Dec. 26, 1914.
Lack of diversity in New Castle: 2010 census figures put the percentage of African Americans in Craig County at 0.2.
Interviews: Jane Johnston, Lori LeMay, Jerry Jones, Don Charlton, Bernth Lindfors, Jane Nicholas, Nancy Saunders, Bonnie LeRoy, Al Stencell, J. Harry Woody.
Social history of Fenwick Mines: From “Geologic Wonders of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests,” Pamphlet No. 3 in a series, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Region, 2001.
Diversity among Fenwick workers: Ibid. and author interview, Jane Johnston, Craig County Historical Society, Nov. 24, 2014.
Italians’ goal to earn enough money to return home: Lori Barfield, “Fenwick Mine Complex,” for U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Region, June 5, 1990. The quote comes from an interview with Craig County native “Boots” Hutchinson, who attended school in Fenwick. (Researcher’s name is now Lori LeMay.) Author interview, Lori LeMay, May 26, 2015.
Preponderance of minority labor in mining camps: Michael B. Barber et al., “Industry as Rural Landscape: The Fenwick Iron Mining Complex, Craig County, Virginia,” for Jefferson National Forest, April 1995.
Recollection of brothers in New Castle as children: Author interview, Jerry Jones, Nov. 25, 2014.
Recollection of life in New Castle: Author interview, Don Charlton, Nov. 24, 2014.
Family name misrecorded as Mules instead of Muse: In the 1920 census, a ninety-three-year-old grandmother named America Cook lives with Harriett and Cabell Muse, along with their three youngest children, all of whom are wrongly filed under the Mules surname.
America Cook’s probable whereabouts in 1870: Found in the 1870 census living in the Maggoddee Creek section of Franklin County, Virginia; the name “America” was likely mistyped as “Avram.”
“My great-grandfather was a white man”: Author interview, J. Harry Woody, April 1, 2016.
Race relations in New Castle region: A trusted former colleague who is now retired, JoAnne Poindexter is a lifelong member of Jerusalem Baptist Church and was the same source who helped in Chapter Three by introducing me to Regina “Sweet Sue” Holmes Peeks and Willie Mae (Mother) Ingram and, later, Sarah Showalter.
Italians had the most dangerous mining jobs: Barber et al., “Industry as Rural Landscape.”
Child workers at Fenwick: Author interview, Lori LeMay, May 26, 2015.
Public records for Cookes/Muses, including marriage certificate: Moses and Hattie Cooke lived in the Big Lick magisterial district of Roanoke County in 1900, sans children. But I could find no accounting of Moses Cooke after that in city directories or public records, including marriage records, criminal complaints, and death records. When Harriett married Cabell Muse in 1917 in Franklin County, she used her maiden name, Harriett Dickerson.
Erratic documentation of Muse children using Cook/Cooke family name: 1930 U.S. Census documents a Virginia-born Thomas Cook living with George and Willie Muse in Manhattan, along with three other nonrelatives; the brothers were all listed as circus employees. (By 1940, Thomas told census takers his name was Thomas Muse; he was living in Roanoke County’s Ballyhack with his mother, listed as Harriett Muse.)
End of Fenwick Mines: Emmette Milton Sr., “Rise and Fall of Prosperity in Craig County,” New Castle (VA) Record, Aug. 22, 1974.
Craig County crime that captured public’s attention: Harvey D. Looney broke out of Craig County Jail on April 24, 1914, according to New Castle (VA) Record.
“the last trace of him being a set of bloody footprints”: Escapee Harvey Looney returned to New Castle a few years later—incognito, dressed as a woman—in order to attend his mother’s funeral. Burks Mountain was later renamed Nutter Mountain. Author interview, Don Charlton, April 22, 2016.
Remnants of Fenwick: Barfield, “Fenwick Mine Complex,” 20.
KKK picnic: Laura Fasbach, “Out-of-State KKK Group to Meet Today,” Roanoke Times, July 11, 1998.
family’s long-accepted timeline: According to the 1910 census, George and Willie were born in 1899 and 1901, respectively. All other official records, including death certificates and employment records, line up with the family’s account that they were born in 1890 and 1893.
Nancy’s reaction to Hattie Cooke revelation: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Dec. 5, 2014.
Black American sideshow acts pretending to be from Africa: Author interview, Bernth Lindfors, Oct. 13, 2014.
Barnum’s claim of discovering Zip: Bernth Lindfors, Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014).
Zip’s being initially coerced to perform: James W. Cook Jr., “Of Men, Missing Links, and Nondescripts: The Strange Career of P. T. Barnum’s ‘What Is It?’ Exhibition,” in Rosemarie Garland Thomson, ed., Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York: New York University Press, 1996).
More varying accounts of Zip’s early career: When the novelist Charles Dickens asked, “What is it?” P. T. Barnum allegedly replied, “That’s what it is, a What Is It,” as recounted in Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).
Klein’s description of carnival’s acts, travels, and reception: Ben H. Klein, “Carnival News: Great American Shows,” Billboard, Sept. 5, 1914.
“strange creatures”: “Completing Arrangements,” Fort Wayne (IN) Daily News, Sept. 10, 1914.
Description of Austin and Stone’s: The main attractions were plays, operas, and traveling Broadway shows (hired at cut rates for the off-season); the sideshows were supplemental attractions typically housed on the second or third floor, according to author interview, Al Stencell, March 1, 2015.
“Marvelous, marvelous!”: Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956).
large blocks of ice: David Kruh, Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989).
Milton Berle’s early career: Ibid., 30.
Background on Albert R. Bawden: “1925 Officers for Local Pin League Elected,” Davenport (IA) Democrat and Leader, May 1, 1925.
Eli Bowen’s desire to return to sideshows in old age: “Legless Eli Bowen Dies in Dreamland,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 5, 1924.
Ads documenting range and popularity of sideshow acts: Classified ads, Billboard, Jan. 22, 1916.
Nascent child labor laws in Roanoke: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 515.
Lewis Hine’s photographs documenting child labor in Roanoke: Taken when he was working for the National Child Labor Committee between 1908 and 1924, now held by Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“These people are going to stare at me anyway”: Author interview, Jane Nicholas, Feb. 26, 2015.
How Eli Bowen became a sideshow performer: Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 213, and Susan Burch, ed., Encyclopedia of American Disability History (New York: Facts on File, 2009).
adults could legally and literally mail children: May Pierstroff, a child of five, was mailed between two Idaho towns in 1914, according to Nancy A. Pope, “100 Years of Parcels, Packages, and Packets,” Feb. 19, 2013, on file at Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum, http://postalmuseumblog.si.edu/2013/02/.
Minik’s railing against American Museum of Natural History: Michael T. Kaufman, “A Museum’s Eskimo Skeletons and Its Own,” About New York, New York Times, Aug. 21, 1993.
Repatriation of Minik’s father’s remains: Kenn Harper, Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo (Frobisher Bay, NU: Blacklead, 1986), 227–229.
Minik’s description of loneliness: Ibid., 34.
Minik’s fear of being returned to museum: Ibid., 44.
Zip’s career around 1914: “Old Favorites in the Circus Ring,” New York Times, April 5, 1914.
How Hiram and Barney Davis became sideshow acts: Bogdan, Freak Show, 122.
“they were not freaks”: Ibid., 126.
Popularity of “A Long Way to Tipperary”: “Christmas 1914: The Day Even WWI Showed Humanity,” Associated Press, Dec. 20, 2014.
Interviews: Fred Pfening III, Don Nicely, Rand Dotson, Al Stencell, Nancy Saunders, Kinney Rorrer
throwing his hat into the ring: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 118.
Size of traveling circuses in early 1900s: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture and Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 5–9.
Timing and plotting of circus routes: Dexter Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), 220–221.
“a nonintellectual activity”: Author interview, Fred Pfening III, Nov. 10, 2014.
Ringlings recruit drummers: Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 180–182.
“Quite often the carnivals would change their name”: Author interview, Warren Raymond, Feb. 26, 2015.
“nature’s greatest mistakes”: “Big Street Fair This Week,” Whitewright (TX) Sun, Aug. 10, 1917.
Shelton’s rise in carnival hierarchy: The first press mentions of Shelton were “Deep Water Jubilee” notice, New York Clipper, May 23, 1914 (Shelton is listed as a candy butcher), and “Carnival Rosters,” Billboard, March 18, 1916 (Shelton was listed as an announcer for Paul’s United Shows).
Description of Shelton’s hand deformity: Author interview, Don Nicely, Feb. 26, 2015.
Biographical details for Shelton: Billboard directories have him first listed in 1916 as an “announcer.” He was born on April 6, 1897, in Grainger County, Tennessee, according to census records.
Origin of “candy butcher”: Joe McKennon, Circus Lingo (Sarasota, FL: Carnival Publishers of Sarasota, 1980), 23.
Pinkard’s developing black subdivision: Reginald Shareef, The Roanoke Valley’s African American Heritage: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning, 1996), 39–40, and Kevin Kittredge, “Recalling the ‘Yarb Doctor,’” Roanoke Times, July 19, 2006.
Pinkard’s fashion flair: When Pinkard’s Court was razed in 1998 to make room for a Lowe’s and a Walmart, one former resident lamented, “They should have left that arch”; Christina Nuckols, “The Life and Times of Pinkard Court,” Roanoke Times, Nov. 9, 1997.
shortly after marrying Cabell Muse, in 1917: Harriett’s 1917 marriage certificate is on file at the Franklin County courthouse. For it, Harriett gives her maiden name as Dickerson. No mention was ever made of her marriage to Moses Cook, and no courthouse marriage records for Moses Cook and Harriett Dickerson could be found.
the right to live without fear of being lynched: Author interview, Rand Dotson, Jan. 12, 2015, and Isabel Wilkerson, “When Will the North Face Its Racism?,” New York Times, Jan. 10, 2015.
Examples of Jim Crow restriction: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 129–130.
Virginia poll taxes: “Virginia Constitutional Convention (1901–1902),” Encyclopedia of Virginia, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Constitutional_Convention_Virginia_1901-1902.
Brothers as “big money getters”: “Metropolitan and Loos Shows Open 1917 Season,” Billboard, March 3, 1917, p. 34.
Booger Red’s Congress of Rough Riders: “Big Crowd at Carnival,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, Oct. 3, 1916. Ad copy from Billboard, Jan. 31, 1920.
“the shows are all clean and meritorious”: “Big Grist of Indictments,” Corsicana (TX) Daily Sun, Oct. 28, 1919.
they oddly shared a left-hand deformity: “Second and third fingers of left hand grown together,” according to John George Loos’s World War I draft registration card.
Freak- and talker-seeking ad for J. George Loos Shows: Billboard, June 10, 1916.
Comparison of Muses’ and other performers’ contracts: Copies of contracts for Zip, George Bell, and James G. Tarver (the white giant) were provided by collector and sideshow researcher Fred Pfening III.
“I am sure Bell was of at least average intelligence”: Author interview, Pfening.
George Bell, “the colored giant” and minstrel: Bell died in 1919 at sixty-five, after being shot by a fellow circus worker, Maceo Ealy, according to “Negro Giant Dead,” Evening Telegraph (IL), March 25, 1919.
plant shows: Author interview, Al Stencell, March 18, 2015.
Shelton exaggerates his position: “Circus Men Are Hetterich’s Guests,” Journal News (OH), May 1, 1923.
shortchanger’s code of honor: Harry Lewiston, Freak Show Man: The Autobiography of Harry Lewiston as Told to Jerry Holtman (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968), 89.
Shortchanging was frequent: Author interviews, Al Stencell (via phone and e-mail), December 2014–January 2015.
Wives were “time-wasters”: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 102.
Preponderance of gay men in circus: Author interviews, Stencell, and Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 183.
Stockholm syndrome: “When someone holds you totally powerless, totally isolated and has complete power of life and death over you, and then he lets you live, you think, ‘He could have killed me but he didn’t,’” the psychiatrist Martin Symonds told reporter Erik Eckholm, “Out of Captivity; Hostage Bond of Captors Is Common,” New York Times, July 1, 1985.
Shelton’s reputation: Multiple ads the summer of 1920, including on p. 93 of Billboard, July 31, 1920.
Barnes’s dog-and-pony show: Dave Robeson, Al G. Barnes, Master Showman (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1936), 30.
Showmen’s cashing in on America’s fascination with the exotic: To hone his tribal knowledge for the spieling of Wu Foo, supposedly a Ghanian tribal chief but actually a black native New Yorker, Harry Lewiston bought books on Africa and memorized country names, according to Lewiston, Freak Show Man, 187–189.
Barnes “quickly realized [the Muses’] possibilities”: Robeson, Al G. Barnes, Master Showman, 276–277.
the Muse brothers morphed: Various ads from the Barnes sideshow of that era also cast them as Ecuadorian Twins and/or Ecuadorian Cannibals.
Mabel Stark’s prowess: Miss Cellania, “Mabel Stark: The Lady with the Tigers,” Feb. 7, 2013, http://mentalfloss.com/article/48808/mabel-stark-lady-tigers.
fireworks would emanate from her head: Robeson, Al G. Barnes, text and photographs, and “Barnes’ Circus Scores a Hit in Cincinnati,” Billboard, Sept. 20, 1919.
Barnes dedicates lion: Billboard, May 10, 1919, p. 84.
Tusko’s death at forty-two: “Death Takes Tusko, Big Elephant That Lived Stormy Life,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1933.
“Displays of sex, horror, and strangeness”: A. W. Stencell, Seeing Is Believing: America’s Sideshows (Toronto: ECW Press, 2002), 4.
Barnes show described as “all beauty and muscle”: Billboard, Sept. 20, 1919, pp. 48, 68.
“too much for one pair of eyes to see”: “Deming Was Out En Masse to See the Big Circus,” Deming (NM) Highlight, Nov. 9, 1923.
“Bodies of Zanzibar Youths”: Scranton (PA) Republican, June 23, 1923.
Coverage, with brothers’ picture, in Scranton: “Barnes Big Circus Will Be in This City Today,” Scranton (PA) Republican, June 26, 1923.
Shelton may have been co-managing the Muses earlier: There are brief descriptions of Barnum’s Monkey Men being managed by “Messrs. Shelton and Stone,” Billboard, March 3, 1917, p. 34, and New York Clipper, March 14, 1917. The “Shelton” is presumably Candy Shelton. Judging by 1918 Billboard ads, Shelton is their sole manager.
Barnes’s stormy marriage record: “Al G. Barnes Dies,” Around the White Tops (Circus Fans of America publication), September 1931; on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
“his zest for life”: “Al G. Barnes Dies; Noted Circus Man,” New York Times, July 25, 1931.
George and Willie feigned servitude: Stanley Elkins’s views were influential during the development of affirmative-action programs designed to counteract the lingering effects of slavery on black culture; Quarles, Negro in the Making of America, 74–75, and Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959).
frustration behind a façade of happiness: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,” Lyrics of Lowly Life (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1896). Dunbar’s poem inspired Maya Angelou’s “The Mask.”
“It’s still not uncommon for people to misdiagnose albinism”: Author interview, Bonnie LeRoy, June 4, 2015.
“rigid caste system of the circus”: Lewiston, Freak Show Man, 213–214.
Freaks said to be moody and illiterate: Bradna, Big Top, 236.
Novelty was always the goal: “Curiosities as Drawing Cards,” Billboard, May 24, 1901.
But as Willie himself told the story: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Nov. 5, 2015.
“Eko and Iko could play anything”: Author interviews, Al Stencell (via phone and e-mail), December 2014–January 2015, with primary source Charlie Roark, as noted in Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010).
Background on minstrelsy: Jan Harold Brunvand, ed., American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1998), 122.
Barnum’s jig-dancing contests: Stencell, Seeing Is Believing, 174. In his memoir, The Life of P. T. Barnum (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1888), Barnum himself described John Diamond as a “Negro break-down dancer” and said Diamond occasionally swindled him.
The term “Jim Crow”: One African-American’s perspective on Jim Crow is the Reverend Walter H. Brooks’s poem “The ‘Jim Crow’ Car,” published in the black-owned Richmond Planet, Sept. 15, 1900: “This too is done to crush me, / But naught can keep us back; / ‘My place,’ forsooth, a section / ‘Twixt’ smoker, front and back, / While others ride in coaches / Full large and filled with light,/ And this our Southern Christians / Insist is just and right.”
Clawhammer-style banjo playing and analysis of second known Muse brothers photo: Author interview, Kinney Rorrer, Sept. 26, 2014.
“a sense of freedom and spontaneity”: John Kenrick, Al Jolson: A Biography, 2003 (Musicals101.com).
Bert Williams, one of the highest-paid black entertainers: Kevin Young, “Wearing the Mask,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 2012.
“the funniest man I ever saw”: Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, eds., Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1210.
Rabbit Muse’s attempt to leave home and join a traveling show: Ralph Berrier Jr., “Remembering Rabbit,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 27, 2007.
Rabbit Muse’s family band: “Darkness on the Delta,” from Blues (1976), recorded in Franklin County, VA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8caDIplsAg.
Background on Rabbit Muse and blues of Virginia’s western Piedmont: Liner notes, “Virginia Traditions: Western Piedmont Blues,” produced by Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College, available for download here: http://www.folkways.si.edu/virginia-traditions-western-piedmont-blues/african-american-folk/music/album/smithsonian.
“a better offer from another circus”: Robeson, 277.
a dozen large railroad shows competed: Stencell, Seeing Is Believing, 58.
Ringling Brothers played to as many as two and a half million people: Dean Jensen, Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus (New York: Crown, 2013).
Interviews: Rob Houston, Nancy Saunders, Louise Burrell, Robert Bogdan, Al Stencell
Silent film of circus: Film archives are searchable online at the Circus World Museum website at http://www.cwmdigitacollections.com/cwm-fm-326.html. The brothers are featured twice in Part One, at 1:04 and again at 1:59.
Black performers portrayed as white in banners: Author interview, Rob Houston, Jan. 14, 2015.
“dunk the nigger”: Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York: Random House, 1998), 205.
Anderson sisters optimized the exposure of their spots: Edward J. Kelty, Congress of Freaks with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus, 1926 promotional shot, on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
Kelty’s drinking: Described by his son, Ed Kelty Jr., in Ellen Warren, “The History of E. J. Kelty,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 7, 2003.
Kelty pawned his negatives: Miles Barth, “Edward J. Kelty and Century Flashlight Photographers,” in Kelty et al., Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002).
Soaring KKK membership: C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 115.
“considered white when they traveled”: Author interview, Nancy Saunders and Louise Burrell, Sept. 14, 2014.
As whites: George and Willie were also listed as “white” on their World War II draft registration cards.
managers plied Clicko with beer: Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 192, and A. W. Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010).
Cook bailed him out of trouble: After Clicko had been arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct, Cook gave the jailers a big book of circus tickets and left with Clicko, according to Albert Tucker, “The Strangest People on Earth,” Sarasota (FL) Sentinel, July 7, 1973.
Doll family’s tiny furniture and Jack Earle’s extra-long bed: Dexter Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), 225.
Ingalls kept 10 percent of the door: Ibid., 224.
Lewiston’s errors: A. W. Stencell, Seeing Is Believing: America’s Sideshows (Toronto: ECW Press, 2002), 6.
Ingalls’s verbal flair: Harry Lewiston, Freak Show Man: The Autobiography of Harry Lewiston as Told to Jerry Holtman (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968), 201–203. Ingalls ballyhoo as quoted in Dean Jensen, Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus (New York: Crown, 2013), 145.
Lowery’s personal mantra: Clifford Edward Watkins, Showman: The Life and Music of Perry George Lowery (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003).
Sideshow band timing and setup: Ibid.
Sideshow revenues as estimated by Ingalls: “Circus Side Show Brought Up to Date,” New Bedford (MA) Sunday Standard, July 2, 1916.
“No secret can survive long”: Dean Jensen, Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus (New York: Crown, 2013), 146–147.
Alfredo Codona: John Ringling signed the Flying Codonas to be the headliners for RB&BB in 1927, according to Jensen, Queen of the Air, 171.
James Bailey’s humble beginnings: “A Caesar Among Showmen,” New York Times, April 19, 1891.
German military studies Bailey’s methods: Ibid. Bailey’s wizardry in logistics is also described in Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), Chapter 3.
The Bailey vs. Barnum battle over Columbia: Fellows’s account (Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show) says Barnum offered Bailey $10,000 for the elephant, the first born in captivity, while Bradna’s (Bradna, Big Top) says he offered him $50,000.
Bailey as silent but canny partner for Barnum: Bradna, Big Top, 33.
“an awful exhibition of faltering nerve”: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 65.
The Ringling Brothers’ initial circus jobs: Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 175–176.
Lou Ringling’s double duty: Charles Philip Fox, A Ticket to the Circus: A Pictorial History of the Incredible Ringlings (New York: Bramhall House, 1958).
Al Ringling’s exaggeration of circus size: David C. Weeks, Ringling: The Florida Years, 1911–1936 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 9.
Al Ringling’s plow balancing: “Wisconsin Museum Dedicated to the Big Top,” New York Times, Aug. 2, 1959.
“almost impregnable”: North and Hatch, 116–117, 123–125.
Ringlings’ purchase of Barnum and Bailey: Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 184. Other accounts of the sales price differ, including that in John and Alice Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1957), which put the sale at $410,000 (186).
John Ringling’s appetite: Taylor Gordon, Born to Be (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 113.
John Ringling’s looks and voice: Weeks, Ringling, 1.
Ringlings’ quest to absorb their competitors: Bradna, Big Top, 71–73.
“Kill Diamond in some humane way”: Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus, 206–207.
Media’s love of and reliance on Fellows: “Dexter Fellows, Press Agent, Dies,” New York Times, Nov. 27, 1937.
“He could improvise the type”: Ibid.
“pride of calling”: Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 292–293.
“built-in incentive to keep the sideshow exhibits happy”: Author interview, Robert Bogdan, Sept. 2, 2014.
RB&BB’s announcement about Eko and Iko: “Lew Graham Made One of Finds of His Career,” Billboard, Aug. 5, 1922.
fifty-eight-pound Human Skeleton: Robinson was married to Baby Bunny Smith, the 467-pound fat lady; Robinson was best known for his role in the horror film Freaks (1932), according to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0732977/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.
A paper in Syracuse: “Bodies Covered With Wool,” Syracuse (NY) Journal, July 16, 1923.
one of the few photos I found of Shelton from that era: From Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo.
Possibly hyped-up claim about sideshow workers’ pay: “Circus Freaks Are Well Paid,” Sun (NY), April 1, 1924. The article described Lionel as being the highest-paid freak on the Ringling sideshow at the time, at $250 a week, with Clio the snake charmer being the lowest-paid, at $75 a week. George and Willie, it said, “are drawing $400 a week between them.” The story noted that pitch cards typically brought in an additional $50 to $100 a week. Bradna wrote: “An outstanding freak is worth from $200 to $2,500 a week. Others with specialties that are easily duplicated are content with $42.50,” Big Top, 236.
Shelton’s friendships and associations: Noted from Billboard mentions on Nov. 9, 1922; Dec. 22, 1923; Jan. 19, 1924; and Oct. 17, 1925.
Christmas poem: Barry Gray, “A Side-Show Review,” Billboard, Dec. 25, 1926.
The Ringling brass hadn’t bothered: “I don’t know which is Eko and which is Iko,” wrote Ringling manager I. W. Robertson in an internal memo, Feb. 25, 1937, on file at Circus World Museum.
Description of 1924 backstage Halloween party: “R-B Halloween Party,” Billboard, Nov. 25, 1924.
they reprinted his every word: Scott M. Cutlip, Public Relations History: From the 17th to the 20th Century: The Antecedents (New York: Routledge, 1995), 178.
Interviews: Rand Dotson, Melville “Buster” Carico, Nancy Saunders, Dot Brown
Fellows mislabels Muse brothers’ home state: Dexter Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), 309.
the lamentations of a poem: From Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Haunted Oak,” as recounted in ibid., 62. Written in 1900, Dunbar’s anti-lynching poem could have been based on one of 105 lynchings that occurred that year. Scholar Edward F. Arnold has theorized that Dunbar wrote it after hearing the story from an old ex-slave who lived near the grounds of Howard University.
Smith’s lynching was the city’s last: Author interview, Rand Dotson, Jan. 12, 2015.
one-twelfth of what it was planning: Beth Macy, “Community by the Book,” Roanoke Times, March 12, 2006.
“a little prayer that God”: Ibid.
the most prolific filmmaker of the silent period: Gerald R. Butters Jr., “From Homestead to Lynch Mob: Portrayals of Black Masculinity in Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates,” Journal for MultiMedia History 3 (2000). Micheaux’s Roanoke office operated from 1922 to 1925, according to the documentary The Czar of Black Hollywood, Block Starz TV, 2014. He also had offices in Chicago and Harlem.
Roanoke Times’ response to The Birth of a Nation: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 527.
Lynchings of World War I veterans: Butters, “From Homestead to Lynch Mob,” part 2.
Lynching as spectator sport: Ibid., 207.
Micheaux explored the negative traits: Ibid., part 1.
“Oscar was just light-years ahead of his time”: Public lecture by Bayer Mack on The Czar of Black Hollywood, which he wrote and directed, Grandin Theatre Film Festival, Roanoke, May 3, 2015.
Blacks now owned $53 million in property: “Negroes in Virginia Owners of Property Valued at $53,516,174,” Roanoke Times, July 20, 1924.
three-quarters of African Americans living in the South were still working as day laborers or sharecroppers: Jill Quadagno, “Unfinished Democracy,” in Louis Kushnick and James Jennings, eds., A New Introduction to Poverty: The Role of Race, Power, and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 77–78.
stringent Jim Crow laws: In 1902, Virginia adopted a new state constitution that was never put to the voters for ratification; it had provisions for a poll tax and a literacy test for voting, according to C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), and Geoff Seamans, “A Quarter Century of Racial Change,” Roanoke Times and World-News, May 13, 1979.
Visiting Swedish writer’s take on segregation: Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow, 117–118.
Black-white interactions could now be as bizarrely intimate: Naomi A. Mattos, “Segregation by Custom Versus Segregation by Law, 1910–1917, City of Roanoke,” written for Roanoke Regional Preservation Office, 2005; on file with Kern Collection, Virginia Room, Roanoke City Library.
more than seventy African Americans had been lynched: Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow, 115.
Spiller, who would go on to serve as the city’s commonwealth attorney: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 509, 649, 652.
Roanoke Klan parade and rally: “Klansmen Stage Big Celebration,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1925; also recounted by Mike Hudson, “Visible Empire,” Roanoke Times, Dec. 2, 2001.
Spiller and company declared: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, as initially reported in Roanoke Times.
law-and-order defender of racial integrity: Spiller biography from Philip Alexander Bruce et al., History of Virginia, vol. 4 (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1924), 312–313.
At ninety-eight years old, retired but still a legend: Author interview, Melville “Buster” Carico, Jan. 20, 2015.
During Prohibition: Prohibition took effect in Virginia in 1916 and was legalized federally in 1920 via the Eighteenth Amendment.
illegal ’20s drinking: Clare White, Roanoke: 1740–1982 (Roanoke, VA: Roanoke Valley Historical Society, 1982), 98–99.
“permissive law-breaking”: Ibid., 98.
Spiller’s campaign against gambling: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 665.
Black-crime coverage: “Police Court Notes,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 27, 1923.
“Fifty and thirty”: “Police Court Notes,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 28, 1923.
Arrest of Harrison Muse for assault: Case No. 3761 in Corporation Court for City of Roanoke, filed March 1923.
Cabell Muse as Oscar Micheaux–type character: Ralph D. Matthews, “Tragedy in Wake of Circus Freaks,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1929.
Interviews: Frank Ewald, Rand Dotson, Nancy Saunders, Dot Brown, Melville “Buster” Carico, Jerry Jones, A. L. Holland, John Molumphy
officials had gone to the trouble: In 1914, the State of Louisiana mandated that all circus and tent exhibitions provide two separate entrances and exits, separate ticket offices, and at least two ticket takers to divide black and white patrons, requiring that they be at least twenty-five feet apart: http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit5/lesson5/jimcrowimages.pdf.
back-end blues: A. W. Stencell, Seeing Is Believing: America’s Sideshows (Toronto: ECW Press, 2002), 178.
“Mr. Ringling’s niggah”: Taylor Gordon, Born to Be (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 105. “Niggah didn’t mean anything, but to be a rich man’s niggah—that established the amount of liberty the individual niggah was to have,” Gordon wrote.
Dot Brown’s recollection of Harriett’s dream: Author interview, Dot Brown, March 2001, with Roanoke Times cowriter Jen McCaffery.
Prohibition violence in Roanoke: “Liquor Blamed for Five Deaths: Four Officers Have Lost Lives,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 9, 1927.
George Davis’s camera and borrowed car: Author interview, Frank Ewald, Sept. 18, 2014.
Lynching picture from Davis’s collection: Says author/historian Rand Dotson, who has written several articles about Virginia lynchings, “That image is very likely from a lynching of four black miners in Clifton Forge in 1891. It could also be from a lynching of four black men in Richlands, Virginia, in 1893. Both of these events were covered (i.e., celebrated) in the Roanoke Times. Indeed, some of the rope used in the Richlands murder was presented to a reporter in Roanoke.” E-mail to author, Oct. 2, 2014.
“all strange oddities”: Roanoke Times, Oct. 14, 1927.
Ringling’s route in 1927: “Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows Official Route,” Season 1927, on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
they were found floating off Madagascar: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 237, and “They Got Permanent One Back at Home in Madagascar,” Sun (NY), March 31, 1925.
Treatment of Clicko’s hair: Neil Parsons, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 98.
Patrons could have their picture made with the brothers: “Soar on Clouds of Circus Canvas,” Plain Dealer (OH), June 4, 1928, and “A Camel Has Zero on Eko and Iko,” Fairfield (IA) Weekly Ledger, Aug. 10, 1922.
“as a chicken moults”: “Strange People,” Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 1927. The writer misspelled Eko’s moniker as Eeko.
hampered in terms of sentence construction: Author interview, A. L. Holland, Oct. 27, 2014.
Willie Muse’s intelligence: Author interview, John Molumphy, Aug. 4, 2015; mental competency seconded by lawyer Nick Leitch, who also deposed Willie Muse in 1996.
“Mr. Fellows’s stories are taken for granted”: Guy Fawkes, “The Wayward Press: Spring Fret,” The New Yorker, May 10, 1930.
Eko and Iko were often among the top tier of sideshow headline grabbers: One such headline was MEN FROM MARS SNUB OTHER FREAKS, New York Evening Post, April 23, 1927. The bogus story that ran beneath it claimed, “Iko and Eko do not fraternize with the other ‘strange people.’ For that matter they don’t talk to any great amount with each other. By the hour they stand before the monkey cage, wrinkling up their foreheads and shaking their shaggy heads.”
Muses and others reportedly mourn Zip’s impending death: “Fellow Freaks Sad as Zip Nears Death,” New York Evening Post, April 9, 1926.
Brothers’ names chosen for side of gilly: “Reo Speed Wagon in New Role,” pictured in April 17, 1921, Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram; purpose of vehicle explained in “Reo Holds Freak Job,” Oregonian, Jan. 8, 1928.
Gertrude Stein review mentioning Eko and Iko: John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1934.
Photo from Christmas 1926: According to handwritten notes on the back of the picture, the snapshot originated with Langley Charlan, who in 1940 was renting out a room in his Miami house to Candy’s ex-wife, Cora “Frankie” Shelton, then a fifty-six-year-old restaurant waitress, according to U.S. Census documents.
“home planet was in the ascendancy”: “Bearded Lady Pays Debt to Lady Luck,” New York Times, April 21, 1927.
Krao Farini’s funeral wishes: “Shy Bearded Lady of Circus Orders Hairy Body Cremated,” Associated Press, April 17, 1926.
civic leaders had fretted that Roanoke: “Circus Pleases Huge Audience,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927.
Reunion of “Miss Leslie” with brothers at fairgrounds: Author interview, Jerry Jones, Leslie Crawford’s nephew, Nov. 25, 2014.
Segregation often broke down inside sideshow tent: Author interview (via e-mail), Rand Dotson, Feb. 9, 2015, citing Gregory J. Renoff, The Big Tent: The Traveling Circus in Georgia, 1820–1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).
Description of tug-of-war over brothers: “Circus United a Negro Family,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927.
Black and white incarceration rates: “Ratio of proportion admitted to prison to share of population, by race, 1926–1993,” Figure H, and other analyses, Robynn J. A. Cox, “Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” Economic Policy Institute, Jan. 16, 2015: http://www.epi.org/publication/where-do-we-go-from-here-mass-incarceration-and-the-struggle-for-civil-rights/.
“disturbed showmen tore their hair”: Scott Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Interviews: Nancy Saunders, Al Stencell, Greg Renoff, Harvey Lutins, Nancy Barbour, Melville “Buster” Carico, T. Roger Messick, Fred Dahlinger, Neil Parsons, Jane Nicholas, Ralph Reddick, A. L. Holland, Bernth Lindfors
he thought Baby Dot had died: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Feb. 11, 2015.
Roanoke Times reported in its usual racist language: Scott Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Reunion account mocked by reporter: Ibid.
Decline of sideshow: A prediction for sideshow banishment was made by the president of the American Association of Fairs and Expositions in 1921, according to A. W. Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010), 199.
“Nothing now makes anyone wonder or exhibit interest”: Quoted in ibid., 199.
Sideshow customers as do-gooders: Rachel Adams, Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 14.
Sideshow was “right thing to do”: Author interview, Al Stencell, March 1, 2015.
Ringlings as captains of industry: Author interview, Greg Renoff, Feb. 17, 2015.
Female lynching victims: “The Anti-Lynching Crusaders: The Lynching of Women,” NAACP Papers, 1922, http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/lynch/doc7.htm; overall lynching numbers, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, 2015, http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf.
“It all reverts to one simple question”: Hart, “Vexing Problem Develops over Two Circus Albinos,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 17, 1927.
Square footage and description of Muse property: Recorded on a building appraisal permit, on file at Roanoke City Hall. The property was worth $395 in 1970. The lot registered 26 by 52 feet, according to an engineering survey and map recorded in 1943. Harriett’s sister-in-law’s residence there is documented in the 1927 city directory.
Messick’s oratorical flair: Author interview and follow-up letter, T. Roger Messick, Nov. 3, 2014.
Messick’s work habits: Author interview, Harvey Lutins, Feb. 5, 2015.
Messick’s home and office life: Author interview, Nancy Barbour, Nov. 12, 2015.
Messick’s suicide: Cause of death was “gunshot wound of abdomen,” according to his February 1962 death certificate. The wound was self-inflicted, according to his obituary.
“Next time I’m gonna steal enough”: Author interview, Melville “Buster” Carico, Jan. 20, 2015.
Messick represented the defendant: “Why Did Lee Scott Kill Dana Weaver?,” True Detective, October 1949.
Messick’s closing arguments on behalf of Lee Scott: Clarence Whittaker, “Lee Scott Convicted of First Degree Murder, Given 99-Year Sentence,” Roanoke Times, July 3, 1949.
remarkably unremarkable and upstanding life: In 2002, I spent several weeks researching the murder of Dana Marie Weaver for a history article in the Roanoke Times but ultimately did not publish it, at the request of the murderer’s widow, who said it would devastate her, and her children, who knew nothing of their father’s criminal past.
The reporter cited Roanoke police officers, not Harriett: “Circus United a Negro Family,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 15, 1927, front page.
“not paid them one single, solitary, red penny”: Filed in Law and Equity Court of City of Richmond, VA: Georgie Muse v. Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows, Incorporated, and Herman Shelton; on file at Library of Virginia. Willie’s lawsuit is similarly named, only it’s filed on behalf of “Willie Muse, an infant under the age of twenty-one years who sues by Cabell Muse, his next friend,” Oct. 17, 1927.
“They were tired of being considered wild men”: “Mother of Freaks Sues Big Circus,” Daily News-Record (VA), Oct. 19, 1927.
no one could pinpoint with certainty their dates of birth: “Their Mother does not know the day they were born, and as far as I know, they were born in a County that does not have a record of their births,” wrote their attorney, Wilbur Austin, in a 1937 letter to Ringling pertaining to their lack of Social Security numbers. Indeed, neither Franklin nor nearby Pittsylvania County birth records have the brothers’ birth records under the Cook or Muse surname. Most family records, including obituaries and death certificates, list Willie’s birth year as 1893 and George’s as 1890, although George’s death certificate says he was born Dec. 24, 1901. Various ship and plane manifests list their birth years as between 1893 and 1902.
Kelley’s legal strategies: Joe Botsford, “Legal Eagle of Circus Spins Yarn,” Milwaukee Sentinel, May 30, 1963.
John Ringling’s forays into real estate, railways, and oil: David C. Weeks, Ringling: The Florida Years, 1911–1936 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 62.
Ringling’s snobbishness: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 62.
Kelley’s power grab against Ringling: Ibid., 226–228.
Kelley’s insistence on prenuptial agreements: Weeks, Ringling, 227–229.
Kelley’s attention to detail: Letter of tribute written by Circus World Museum Director Chappie Fox, on Kelley’s death, on file in Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, November 1963.
“The Ringlings paid their people ten percent less”: Author interview, Fred Dahlinger, Jan. 29, 2015.
Abuse of Clicko by Paddy Hepston: Neil Parsons, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Clicko was embraced by Frank Cook and family: Ibid., 96.
Cook adopts Clicko: North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 18.
Clicko’s hair and limited vocabulary: Ibid.
“Cook ensured Taibosh had all creature comforts”: Parsons, Clicko, 129–132.
Brothers performing for colleagues in circus backyard: Billboard, Easter 1922.
“good examples of contented freaks”: “Strange People,” Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 1927.
Incorporation papers for RB&BB Circus: On file at Circus World Museum, filed by John M. Kelley, July 1932.
Lawsuit suspended for a time: “Move to Quash Circus Cases,” Associated Press, Oct. 27, 1927.
it was a hard blow to patrons: “The Way of the Circus,” Manitowoc (WI) Herald-Tribune, Nov. 10, 1927.
an editorial writer reframed the story: “Circus and Other Ethics,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Nov. 6, 1927.
seemed lonesome for the crowds: “Ambassadors From Mars, Stolen Twins, Return Home to Their Ma After 12 Years,” Belleville (KS) Telescope, Nov. 17, 1927.
Roanoke papers’ response to settlement: “Eko and Iko, Ambassadors, Have Received Financial Settlement,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 20, 1928.
“There are so many stories missing”: Jane Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead? Ethics, Photography, History, and the Study of Freakery,” Social History/Histoire Sociale 47, no. 93 (May 2014): 139–155.
“piece together your evidence with empathy and conjecture”: Author interview, Jane Nicholas, Feb. 26, 2015.
“Eko and Iko sit snugly”: “Eko and Iko, Ambassadors, Have Received Financial Settlement,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 20, 1928.
That winter, the brothers found themselves engaged: Author interview, A. L. Holland, Oct. 16, 2014.
Neighbors afraid to get too close: Author interview, Ralph Reddick, May 2001.
Brief New York Times mention of reunion: “Habu Still Scowls Even on the Radio,” New York Times, April 8, 1928.
The New Yorker credits brothers’ return to circus to gluttony: Alva Johnston, “Sideshow People—III,” The New Yorker, April 28, 1934.
the brothers seemed captivated only by the menagerie: “The Phillies Might Watch Those Circus Midgets Sock,” New York Evening Post, May 1, 1928.
“bearded twins from someplace or other”: Clement V. Curry, “Circus Antics Renews Youth with Thrills,” Buffalo (NY) Courier Journal, June 7, 1928.
“foreign rarities scouts” and “savage” displays meant to reinforce racial inferiority: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 223, and Bernth Lindfors, Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 158–175.
Brothers “look like Boy Scouts” in comparison: Author interview, Bernth Lindfors, March 30, 2015.
Black rousties earned less than whites: Davis, Circus Age, 70–71.
Interviews: A. L. Holland, Reginald Shareef, Nancy Saunders
Cabell “overbearing and brutish”: Ralph D. Matthews, “Tragedy in Wake of Circus Freaks,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1929.
“We made cotton”: Author interviews, A. L. Holland, Oct. 27, 2014, and May 2001; Sheree Scarborough, African American Railroad Workers of Roanoke: Oral Histories of the Norfolk and Western (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2014), 29–37.
The injured man died: “Injuries Fatal to Roanoke Man,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 4, 1927.
Importance and status of car in America: David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920–1940: How Americans Lived Through the “Roaring Twenties” and the Great Depression (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 27–52.
Billboard promoting cars: Ibid., 47.
Drought conditions in 1928: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 686.
Economic conditions in 1928: “Banksters” was a term that came out of the Senate hearings to regulate the American banking system: Gilbert King, “The Man Who Busted the ‘Banksters,’” Smithsonian, Nov. 29, 2011.
Prohibition-era car bombing: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 686–688.
Account of Hope Wooden’s murder of Cabell Muse: Roanoke World-News, July 24, 1928. (The newspaper incorrectly reported his name as Calvin Muse.)
Peonage accounts from elsewhere in the South: “Five Peons Escape,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1929.
Alabama slave mines: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor, 2008), 369.
Spiller liked to be called to crime scenes: “19 Convicted on Murder Charge: Average Is One a Month,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 5, 1928.
Stab wounds causing Cabell’s death: Ibid. and “Father of Circus Freaks Is Killed,” Roanoke Times, July 25, 1928.
“adultery and murder were Siamese twins”: Author interview, Reginald Shareef, Sept. 10, 2014.
Willie thought Cabell “wasn’t no good”: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Sept. 14, 2014.
Cabell’s burial: Certificate of Death, State Board of Health, filed July 25, 1928. Muse was buried in Pin Hook (most likely a misspelling of Penhook, just up the road from Truevine) on July 25, 1928. Directories for Truevine Baptist Church Cemetery and Muse Cemetery show a total of six unmarked graves, and Cabell Muse is likely buried in one of those; cemetery maps and inventories courtesy of Virgil Goode.
“So that served him right”: Author interview, Saunders, Aug. 6, 2015.
It would be eight more years: According to Ringling route books on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, the circus next returned to Virginia in 1933, when it performed at stops in Norfolk, Newport News, and Richmond. It didn’t play again in Roanoke until 1935.
Interviews: Louise Burrell, Nancy Saunders, Nadja Durbach, Jane Nicholas, Al Stencell, Andy Erlich, Erika Turner, Ward Hall, Mary “Sug” Davis
Size and history of ship: The Majestic, built before World War I, was passed into the possession of England and then the United States, respectively, as part of the German indemnities: “Belfast Will Build World’s Biggest Ship,” New York Times, Feb. 12, 1926, and whitestarhistory.com.
Accommodations aboard ship: “2,593 on Majestic, a Record Since War,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1928, and “Vintage brochure—S. S. Majestic”: second-class accommodations boasted a “light and airy” dining room and bunk-style beds with double sinks, third-class description not included, http://www.gjenvick.com/HistoricalBrochures/WhiteStarLine/RMS-Majestic/1922/StateroomsAndSuites.html#axzz3iW2E3fXJ.
“Housekeeping!”: Author interview, Louise Burrell, Sept. 14, 2014.
Bertram Mills had cultivated a relationship: “The Renovator of the British Circus,” http://www.circopedia.org/Bertram_Mills.
“the disappearance of freaks”: Kenneth Grahame, Fun o’ the Fair (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1929), 27.
“we are anxious to understand them”: “With Bertram Mills,” Times (London), Jan. 21, 1938.
The British were more sensitive: Author interview, Nadja Durbach, March 16, 2015. Britain had been in the war five years as opposed to America’s one (1917–1918); it also had eight times as many soldiers return from the war wounded; and the British military counted 107,000 civilian deaths and 1.01 million total deaths versus 117,465 American military-only deaths. The British population experienced more than double the percentage of per capita deaths than the United States did in World War I. Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (London: Macmillan, 1933) offers a sobering personal account of World War I losses in Britain, particularly among middle-class military and civilian families.
British response to Freaks: David J. Skal and Elias Savada, Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning (New York: Anchor, 1995), 181.
Ministry of Labor denied the application: “Aliens Branch File,” document no. 574881, with minutes of meetings gathered at British National Archives, box marked “Misc. 5189,” letter dated Sept. 11, 1927.
Mills appeals ruling: Ibid., from a letter by Bertram Mills to Sir W. Haldane Porter, Home Office, Ministry of Labor, Queen Anne’s Chambers, London, Nov. 22, 1927.
Mills drew on both humanitarian and labor arguments: Nadja Durbach, Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Show and Modern British Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 177.
Sideshow performers granted entry: Approval letter, as noted in minutes, collected in “Aliens Branch File,” British National Archives, Nov. 23, 1927.
traveling fairground sideshows in Britain diminish: “Travelling Showmen and Taxation,” Times (London), Jan. 16, 1935.
Cyril Bertram Mills: Author of his father’s biography, Bertram Mills Circus: Its Story (London: Hutchinson of London, 1967), 27. Mills was the case officer who for a time controlled the double British-German agent Joan Pujol Garcia—whom he code-named Garbo, for Greta Garbo—during World War II.
Mills offers £20,000: Circus performance notes, Times (London), June 29, 1934.
Mills’s fondness for Tiny Town: Frank Foster, Pink Coat, Spangles and Sawdust: Reminiscences of Circus Life with Sanger’s Bertram Mills and Other Circuses (London: Stanley Paul, 1948), 109.
Leitzel chopping Ingalls’s finger: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 187.
Jack Earle’s British foray: Author interview, Andrew Erlich, nephew of Jack Earle, who said Earle was particularly close to Graf and the Doll family.
Film clip of Earle and Lya Graf: Queer and Quaint, 1931, filmed at Olympia London and archived by British Pathé, http://www.britishpathe.com.
“It’s part of my job”: Circus Scrap Book no. 10 (April 1931).
keep tabs on his best-earning acts: “Hartman’s Broadcast,” Billboard, Jan. 27, 1934.
“Deformity gave them good jobs”: Foster, Pink Coat, 111–113.
“really [did] look like visitors from a strange planet”: Letter from Cyril B. Mills to Bernth Lindfors, Aug. 1, 1984, shared with the author from Lindfors’s collection.
Ubangi Duck-Billed Savages’ backstory: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 135.
Scouring maps for exotic names: Dexter Fellows and Andrew A. Freeman, This Way to the Big Show: The Life of Dexter Fellows (New York: Viking, 1936), 295–296, and “African ‘Beauties’ Here to Join Circus,” New York Times, April 1, 1930.
Beauty marks of Ubangis: Lindfors, Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 159–160.
Dubbed the freak czar: “Samuel Gumpertz, Showman, 84, Dies,” New York Times, June 23, 1952.
Cook’s skillful dealings with immigration authorities: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 244.
Ubangis’ homesickness: Fellows and Freeman, This Way to the Big Show, 295.
Ubangis’ hygiene: Bradna, Big Top, 243–247.
tried to wash his face in the toilet bowl: Foster, Pink Coat, 109.
Feud with French manager: Bergonier stole their salary, allowing them to keep only the proceeds from their postcard sales: Davis, Circus Age, 135.
Railroad’s influence on standardization of time: “In the days before battery-powered watches and telephones, Old Gabriel was Roanoke’s Big Ben. A reminder of the stability—and authority—of the railroad, it gave order to a town known for its whorehouses, saloons, and the pigs rooting in its streets,” from Beth Macy, “The Blast of the Past,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 25, 1996.
the chaos of local times: “On Time,” National Museum of American History, http://americanhistory.si.edu/ontime/synchronizing/zones.html.
Ubangis celebrate Bergonier’s death: “Famed French Explorer Dies Here,” Sarasota (FL) Herald, Oct. 13, 1930.
Second round of Ubangis fit in better than first: Neil Parsons, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 148.
Allegation that Muse brothers were “severely handicapped mentally”: Letter from Mills to Lindfors, Aug. 1, 1984.
Backstage behavior of Zip: Davis, Circus Age, 182–183, citing Tiny Kline, “Showground-Bound,” unpublished memoir, on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
New York Post joke interview: “Ambassadors From Mars Give Mr. Gann a Status,” New York Evening Post, April 13, 1929.
“they needed supervision”: Author interview, Al Stencell, Nov. 14, 2014.
Review of Jack Earle’s artwork: “Talented Giant,” New York Times, May 10, 1936.
Andy Erlich felt conflicted about his uncle’s story: Author interview, Andrew Erlich, March 14, 2015.
“She better pick her ass up!”: Author interview, Erika Turner, May 17, 2015.
Earle’s giant ring: A. W. Stencell, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens (Toronto: ECW Press, 2010), 151.
Earle as successful businessman: Author interview, Ward Hall, Sept. 5, 2014.
Earle-inspired Tom Waits song, “Get Behind the Mule”: Some of the lyrics: “Big Jack Earle was eight foot one / And he stood in the road and he cried / He couldn’t make her love him, couldn’t make her stay / But tell the good Lord that he tried.”
New York gallery showing of Earle’s work: Andrew Erlich, The Long Shadows: The Story of Jake Erlich (Scottsdale, AZ: Multicultural Publications, 2012).
Morgan’s hunting habits and friendships with royalty: “J. P. Morgan Dies, Victim of Stroke at Florida Resort,” United Press International, March 13, 1943.
one of the country’s first media circuses: Michael Corkery, “A Midget, Banker Hearings and Populism Circa 1933,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2010.
Media stunt with Graf and Morgan: Morgan appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Banking and Currency hearings, formed to inform “constructive legislation” that might get America’s economy back on its feet. The investigation led to a major overhaul of the financial regulatory system, which brought about the Glass-Steagall Act and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The Man Who Will Question Morgan,” New York Times, May 21, 1933.
Graf retreated to Germany: Sherwin D. Smith, “A Midget Sat on J. P. Morgan’s Lap and Showed the Great Banker Was Only Human,” Thirty Years Ago, New York Times, May 26, 1963.
Tom Muse’s legal troubles: Commonwealth of Virginia v. Thomas Muse, indictment for malicious assault with intent to maim, disfigure, disable, and kill, filed Dec. 1, 1930, Hustings Court, City of Roanoke, VA, and “Bryan Gets Life in Penitentiary,” Roanoke Times, Dec. 11, 1930.
“a rough man, very rowdy”: Author interview, Mary “Sug” Davis, Nov. 11, 2014.
Graf’s death: John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999).
triply cursed: Clark Hoyt, “Consistent, Sensitive and Weird,” New York Times, April 18, 2009.
Interviews: Warren Raymond, Bob Blackmar, Ward Hall, Tom Word, Paul Lombardo, Robert M. Brown, Dan Webb, Sarah Showalter
make whiskey, steal, or starve: Thomas S. Word Jr., “The Whiskey Business (A Book Review),” Virginia Bar Association News Journal, Summer 2009.
Illegal whiskey sold in Roanoke region: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 753, and “The History and Culture of Untaxed Liquor in the Mountains of Virginia,” Blue Ridge Institute, http://www.blueridgeinstitute.org/moonshine/the_franklin_county_conspiracy.html.
Ringling’s 1935 return to Roanoke: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 760.
Contract details for brothers’ work with Pete Kortes: Hustings Court, Chancery Order Books No. 28–31, orders delivered by Judge J. Lindsay Almond from the period 1936 to 1939.
Description of Beckmann and Gerety Shows: Details from letter from Fred Beckmann to a potential client in Rockford, IL, June 23, 1932, on file at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI.
Scrip issued by Beckmann and Gerety: Author interview, Warren Raymond, Feb. 26, 2015.
Kortes’s version of World’s Fair: “Carnival Will Open Six-Day Stand Monday,” Register Republic (Rockford, IL), July 7, 1934.
Microcephalics dressed as women: Harry Lewiston, Freak Show Man: The Autobiography of Harry Lewiston as Told to Jerry Holtman (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1968), 1–15, and author interview, Bob Blackmar, Feb. 16, 2015.
Schlitzie’s “rangy” behavior: Author interview, Ward Hall, Sept. 5, 2014.
Honolulu stint: Photograph from collection of Bob Blackmar, noted as “Pete Kortes’ Circus Sideshow—Honolulu T.H. 1950.”
Daily-living details with Kortes show: William Lindsey Gresham, Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny (New York: Rinehart, 1948), 101.
Brothers’ movement back to Ringling via Shelton, without pay: “Willie and George Muse have been in the possession of the Beckman & Gerety Shows and Pete Kortez [sic] for from three to five years; and the said parties have paid practically nothing for the services of Willie and George Muse,” Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book No. 29, Jan. 29, 1937.
Leitzel’s death: Dean Jensen, Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus (New York: Crown, 2013), 244–248.
Leitzel’s closeness to John Ringling: Fred Bradna, The Big Top: My Forty Years with the Greatest Show on Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 194.
Codona and murder-suicide: Jensen, Queen of the Air, 285.
John Ringling’s purchase of ACC: The ACC was composed of five smaller circuses: Sells-Floto, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Al G. Barnes, Sparks, and John Robinson.
John Ringling’s rage: Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch, The Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 219.
Lawsuits against John Ringling: David C. Weeks, Ringling: The Florida Years, 1911–1936 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 224.
at least one hundred lawsuits: North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 249.
Depression-era party behavior among Sarasota’s rich: Weeks, Ringling, 229.
North fills in as uncle’s handyman: Ibid., 250, and North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 230.
Henry and John Ringling North’s takeover: North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 257–259.
Gargantua’s backstory: “67 Baggage Stock Men Walk Out After Supt. Asks to Be Paid Off,” Billboard, June 25, 1938.
broke picket lines with elephants: “Circus Men Strike, But Show Goes On,” New York Times, April 13, 1938.
Clyde Ingalls and Jack Earle pitch in as rousties: Bradna, Big Top, 143–144.
Brouhaha in Scranton: North and Hatch, Circus Kings, 283.
Movement to Barnes-Sells Floto Combined Shows: Ibid., 283–285.
Aerialist not as polished as Leitzel: Account from Independent (MT), July 2, 1938.
Gorilla’s backstory exaggerated: “Enlarged Circus Brings Gargantua,” Kerrville (TX) Daily Times, Oct. 6, 1938.
North nephews pay off union leader: Ibid.
Circus closure blamed on New Deal: Boyd Sinclair, “The Theater-Goer,” Daily Texan, Oct. 2, 1938.
“The kids of today”: Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture and Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 229, quoting nonagenarian circus trouper W. E. “Doc” Van Alstine from 1938.
Messick not available for Harriett’s hire: Author interview, Tom Word, April 1, 2015, and T. Keister Greer, The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 (Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick, 2002). Greer’s book was also a primary source for the 2012 movie Lawless.
Depression-era costumes: “State Fair Freaks and Frolics,” Lincoln (NE) Evening Journal, Sept. 11, 1936.
“Compared to Squeak, Mr. Austin was deadly dull”: Author interview, Harvey Lutins, Aug. 14, 2014.
Austin’s lineage: Documented in S. E. Grose, Botetourt County, Virginia, Heritage Book 1770–2000 (Summersville, WV: Walsworth, 2000), p. 74; Carter O. Lowance was the brother-in-law, as outlined in Harry Hone, Community Leaders of Virginia 1976–1977 (Williamsburg, VA: American Biographical Center, 1977); author interviews with family members.
“practically imbeciles”: The legal terms used today would be “person with intellectual disabilities” or “person with special needs.”
Brothers’ alleged mental disabilities: Petition for guardianship: Harriett Muse v. George and Willie Muse, filed Oct. 26, 1936, Hustings Court.
Social Security payments: The Social Security Act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Taxes began being collected for it in 1937, and regular ongoing benefits began in January 1940, according to the official Social Security website, http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html.
Future managers had to be court-approved: Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book No. 30, p. 339. Ordered by Judge J. Lindsay Almond, Nov. 10, 1938.
“It allows the person to have control of them physically”: Author interview, Paul Lombardo, Aug. 17, 2015.
Harriett “penniless”: Letter from Wilbur Austin Jr. to John Ringling North, Nov. 22, 1938, Circus World Museum.
Rich in Roanoke doing OK during Depression: Barnes, History of the City of Roanoke, 773.
“You smelled the creosote”: Author interview, Dan Webb, Aug. 13, 2015.
Austin seemed to earn every penny: He earned more for the occasional filings and errands he made on the brother’s behalf. Looking over the settlement of accounts filed with the court, attorney Edenfield commented on a 1954 two-day trip to locate the brothers, for which he charged $250. “It looks like small potatoes now, but actually for the time, it was a lot of money,” worth $2,171 today.
Family’s negative views of Austin: Author interview, Robert M. Brown, April 8, 2015.
Virginia in vanguard of eugenics movement: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor, 2008), 240.
Eugenics research: Though the Eugenics Record Office was closed in 1939, today the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory maintains full historical records and artifacts for historical, teaching, and research purposes: http://archives.cshl.edu/R/GDJ9IJNMX99HH5I8ITX3KQVHIHLLCPCKBS3XB5999YJM8UHHL8-00603?&pds_handle=GUEST.
Albinism as genetic flaw: Amram Scheinfeld, You and Heredity (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1939), 147.
“By sterilization and birth control”: Ibid., 404.
Virginia sterilized more people: Author interview, Paul Lombardo, Aug. 17, 2015.
Survivors’ payouts: Gary Robertson, “Virginia Lawmakers OK Payout to Forced Sterilization Survivors,” Reuters, Feb. 26, 2015.
State definition of imbecility: “Mental Defectives in Virginia: A Special Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections to the General Assembly of 1916, on Weak Mindedness in the State of Virginia,” 1915, http://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/buckvbell/2.
Temporary restraining order against Shelton: Letter from Austin to North, Nov. 22, 1938.
Almond’s defense of “massive resistance”: Though the state ended massive resistance under Almond’s governorship, his initial response to the Supreme Court’s ruling of massive resistance as unconstitutional was sheer defiance. The speech in its entirety was recorded by WRVA Radio, Jan. 20, 1959, and digitized by Library of Virginia: http://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/brown/resistance.htm.
“It’s like pouring gas in an open wound”: Author interview and follow-up e-mail with Brenda Hamilton, April 13–14, 2015. The book I gave her was an advance copy of Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle (New York: Harper, 2015).
In a September 1938 letter: Letter from J. F. Wadsworth, Ringling auditor, to Mr. F. C. De Wolfe, assistant treasurer of the Al G. Barnes Circus: Sept. 30, 1938, on file with “RBBB Papers,” Box 36, Circus World Museum.
Orson Welles’s broadcast: “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 1938.
A Syracuse reporter: “Radio Editor Duped,” Variety, Nov. 9, 1938.
Calls from more than 350 readers: “Roanokers Become Alarmed Over Radio Dramatization,” Roanoke Times, Oct. 31, 1938.
Austin’s nervous tics: Author interview, Sarah Showalter, April 29, 2015.
Almond’s order that all brothers’ movements must be court-sanctioned: Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book, p. 330, issued Nov. 10, 1938.
Harriett would now receive monthly updates: Contract with Pete and Marie Kortes, filed Feb. 20, 1939, in Hustings Court, found in misfiled file in records annex by clerk Brenda Hamilton.
“exclusive custody and control”: Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book No. 30, p. 482.
Interviews: Betsy Biesenbach, Veron Holland, Richard L. Chubb, Antoinette Harrell, Dave Price, Myrtle Phanelson, Judy Rock Tomaini, Ward Hall, Melvin Burkhart, Sarah Showalter, Cutie Muse, Bruce Snowdon, Mozell Witcher, Bob Blackmar, J. Harry Woody
Ballyhack’s name: Deedie Dent Kagey, When Past Is Prologue: A History of Roanoke County (Roanoke, VA: Roanoke County Sesquicentennial Committee, 1988), 317–318. The name is supposedly a perversion of “Battly-whack” or “Battle-hack.”
Exclusive golf course: Golf magazine ranked Ballyhack number three on its 2009 list of new private courses. The club facility, which measures 11,400 square feet, is an ultra-private facility that will accommodate “only 60 local and 240 national members” and require membership deposits from $40,000 to $130,000, “depending on a member’s location and status,” according to Randy King, “Finishing Touch,” Roanoke Times, July 8, 2011.
General Grant Maxey’s property: 1880 census records. In contrast to Grant Maxey’s unusual name, the Muse name was already common in Ballyhack. In 1860, a white settler named Thomas R. Muse owned ten slaves in Ballyhack, and his descendants inherited land just across the Roanoke River from Harriett’s—“probably not a coincidence,” Betsy said, especially given the land’s relative proximity to Franklin County, where Muse is a common name.
Percentage of black homesteaders in Roanoke County: Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia, Roanoke: Story of County and City (Roanoke, VA: Federal Works Agency, 1942), 164. There were 1,531 farms in Roanoke County in 1939; average size was 62.6 acres.
Ardelia Jones, Ballyhack storekeeper: Author interview, Veron Holland, April 23, 2015.
Blacks attending college out of state during Jim Crow: Author interview, Richard L. Chubb, Oct. 16, 2014.
A. Byron Smith: Mary C. Bishop, “He Has Overcome,” Roanoke Times, May 6, 2001: A man wrote to the newspaper saying Smith was too strident for Roanoke and ought to leave. A black City Hall janitor reluctantly quit buying from Smith’s oil business because his white supervisor told him that Smith had a “big mouth.” The janitor feared he would lose his job if he didn’t.
“request adequate roads”: Belinda Harris, Looking Back column (1937), reprinted Oct. 8, 2012, Roanoke Times.
“Mama never did like to go out there”: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, June 2, 2014.
Dot’s teenaged beauty: Author interview, Sarah Showalter, April 28, 2015.
Details of Harriett’s daily life: Culled from bills noted in “Second Settlement of Accounts,” April 1938 to December 1949, Hustings Court, City of Roanoke, VA, Chancery Order Book No. 49, pp. 4–8.
Harriett’s household: 1940 U.S. Census, Big Lick Township, Roanoke County. Richard Muse, eighteen, is also listed as a son of Harriett’s living in the home (but he was actually a grandson).
Circus adjustments during World War II: Chang Reynolds, “Clyde Beatty in Person: Season of 1944,” Bandwagon (May/June 1969), 10–19.
Complaint mailed to FBI on brothers’ behalf: Letter from Harry E. Friend of Friend’s Grocery, Walnut Grove, IL, to FBI Chicago office, July 25, 1946.
thanks to a peonage researcher who found the letter: Antoinette Harrell self-published Department of Justice: Slavery, Involuntary Servitude and Peonage in 2014.
FBI rules it will not investigate Friend’s letter: Letter from Caudle to Hoover is dated August 28, 1946, on file at National Archives; letter scans courtesy of Antoinette Harrell, Peonage Research.
only the most egregious peonage cases were investigated: Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 376–377.
“quiet complicity of the federal government in their servitude”: Ibid., 382.
Doubts that brothers could give informed consent: Author interview, Antoinette Harrell, May 7, 2015.
Brothers’ visits home to Ballyhack and Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Myrtle Phanelson, Aug. 5, 2015.
Ballyhack deed paid off: “Second Settlement of Accounts,” April 1938 to December 1949, Hustings Court, City of Roanoke, VA, Chancery Order Book No. 49, p. 9.
FHA guaranteed few loans to blacks: Trevor M. Kollmann and Price V. Fishback, “The New Deal, Race, and Home Ownership in the 1920s and 1930s,” Department of Economics, University of Arizona, 2010.
Harriett rarity in home ownership: William J. Collins and Robert A. Morgo, “Race and Home Ownership: 1900 to 1990,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 1999. Among white Americans in 1940 figures, 43 percent owned their own homes. The white-black home ownership gap was at its highest in 1960.
Sheep-Headed Men: Clyde Beatty Russell Brothers photograph from circus photo collection no. 18, Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, 1944.
Brothers popular along Texas-Mexico border: “Kortes El Paso Biz Holding Up,” Billboard, Jan. 1, 1944.
Brothers conversed easily with Price: Author interview, Dave Price, Jan. 26, 2015.
fondly remembered fellow performer: Paul McWilliams worked 185 days in 1937 and earned $1,266.17—about double Willie’s pay at the time, according to Ringling pay-scale sheets on file at Circus World Museum. (Willie earned $1,007.25 in 1937 for 347 days worked.)
Debated whether to spend money on clothes or woman: Daniel Mannix, Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others (Brooklyn, NY: power-House Books, 1976), 89.
“Everyone on the circus loved them”: Albert Tucker, “The Strangest People on Earth,” Sarasota (FL) Sentinel, July 7, 1973.
Ship and airline manifests from 1940s and ’50s: George and Willie list Kortes’s address in Pasadena, CA, as their home base, ancestry.com. They also list him as their primary contact on the World War II draft registration cards.
Brothers recalled as shy: Author interview, Judy Rock Tomaini, April 25, 2001.
Al Tomaini “peek-proof”: “Life Visits Carnival Town,” Life, June 1983.
Al Tomaini’s generosity: Judy Rock Tomaini, interview by Kim Wilmath, Tampa Bay (FL) Times, Sept. 2, 2010.
Jeanie Tomaini’s tricycle: “Life Visits Carnival Town,” Life, June 1983.
“their value as exhibits declined”: Author interview, Robert Bogdan, via e-mail, Aug. 10, 2015.
Life on Ward Hall show: Author interview, Bruce Snowdon, May 5, 2001: “You get asked the same question over and over; just a total lack of imagination. Sometimes I address the whole group: ‘Just listen carefully—I weigh 712 pounds,’” from Jen McCaffery and Beth Macy, “Where Did All the Freaks Go?,” Roanoke Times, July 13, 2001.
Hall recalls final acts: Author interview, Ward Hall, Sept. 5, 2014, and “Melvin the Human Blockhead Dies,” National Public Radio, Nov. 13, 2001.
Closing of Giant’s Camp: Kim Wilmath, “Big Boot to Return to Former Gibsonton Giant’s Camp,” Tampa Bay (FL) Times, Sept. 9, 2010.
Willie’s old wig: Author interview, Ward Hall.
Melvin Burkhart’s start on sideshow: “Life Visits Carnival Town,” Life, June 1983.
Burkhart’s memories of brothers: Author interview, Melvin Burkhart, April 26, 2001.
“Don’t be unevenly yoked”: Author interview, Sarah Showalter, April 29, 2015.
“Come sit on my big fat knee”: Cutie Muse, interview by Jen McCaffery, Roanoke Times series, Spring 2001.
Harriett “right proud”: Author interview, Mozell Witcher, Nov. 8, 2013.
The brothers’ musical prowess: Author interview, J. Harry Woody, April 1, 2016.
Shady Caribbean dealings: Author interview, Bob Blackmar, Feb. 16, 2015.
Typical show route with Kortes: “Heavy Traveling Kortes Attraction Plays San Juan,” Billboard, Nov. 24, 1951.
Interviews: Sarah Showalter, Dan Webb, Madaline Daniels, Douglas Pardue, JoAnne Poindexter, Mary “Sug” Davis, Willie Mae Ingram, Lawrence Mitchell
Checks from Kortes bounced: “Second Settlement of Accounts,” April 1938 to December 1949, Hustings Court, City of Roanoke, VA, Book No. 49, pp. 4–8. The bad check was written for $113.85, and Austin’s committee had to pay almost $5 in bad-check charges.
Austin’s travels to collect back pay: Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book No. 43, p. 313, July 2, 1954.
Miss Irene and John Houp as community leaders and store owners: Author interviews, Sarah Showalter, April 28 and 29, 2015.
Boswell as slumlord: Author interview, Dan Webb, Roanoke City housing inspector, Aug. 13, 2015.
Rent collectors forcing sex on young women who couldn’t pay: Author interview, Madaline Daniels, Aug. 5, 2015.
Running water availability in Jordan’s Alley: Author interview, Lawrence Mitchell, April 1, 2016.
J. W. Boswell, realty-company founder: Raymond Barnes, A History of the City of Roanoke (Radford, VA: Commonwealth Press, 1968), 283, 309, 403, 419, 540.
Collecting rent on horseback: “An elderly woman on Gregory Avenue N.E. told me before World War II that she remembered my father coming on horseback to collect rent,” John Boswell Jr. said of his father. “Later he drove a Reo automobile that cranked on the side. Our oldest rental account dates from August 1893,” from M. Carl Andrews, “Early Realtor Came with Rails,” Roanoke World-News, March 9, 1976.
Urban renewal as “Negro removal”: Mary C. Bishop, “How Urban Renewal Uprooted Black Roanoke,” Roanoke Times, Jan. 29, 1995.
Madeline Tate’s death: Douglas Pardue, “Madeline Adams Tate: Now She Is a Number,” Roanoke Times, Jan. 26, 1985.
Demolition of Tate’s house: Author interview, Webb.
Conditions of Tate’s house: Douglas Pardue, “Death Leads City to Act Against Poor Housing,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 2, 1985.
How slumlords dealt with tenant complaints: Author interview (via e-mail), Douglas Pardue, July 28, 2015.
Henrietta Lacks born half-block from Jordan’s Alley: Loretta Pleasant was born at 28 12th St. S.W. “A midwife named Fannie delivered her into a small shack on a dead-end road overlooking the train depot, where hundreds of freight cars came and went each day,” according to Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010).
Lacks’s memorial: A marker for Lacks was eventually erected in 2010, paid for by a scientific researcher working at the Morehouse School of Medicine, according to Denise M. Watson, “After Sixty Years of Anonymity, Henrietta Lacks Has a Headstone,” Virginian-Pilot, May 30, 2010.
Tate’s tombstone: Belinda Harris, 1985 Looking Back column, reprinted May 24, 2010, Roanoke Times.
Boswell was the cheapest: Author interview, JoAnne Poindexter, May 2, 2015.
Housing codes in Rugby: Harris, 1965 Looking Back column, reprinted Aug. 17, 2015, Roanoke Times.
“Unmitigated socialism”: “John Boswell, Ex-Councilman, Dies at 67,” Roanoke Times and World-News, Feb. 28, 1979. The quote was recycled in his obituary, like an epitaph.
Harriett’s outstanding debts at time of death: “Second Settlement of Accounts,” Hustings Court, Chancery Order Book No. 49, pp. 4–8.
“Mama’s gone” repeated: Author interviews, Mary “Sug” Davis and Willie Mae Ingram, Nov. 11, 2014.
Interviews: Dr. Craig Mitchell, Margaret Ursprung, Diane Rhodes, Jason Banks, June Lowe, Nancy Saunders, Louise Burrell, George Nicely, Bob Shelton, Reginald Shareef, Teresia McNabb, David Lawrence
feat in minority home ownership: 1960 U.S. Census figures and “African Americans and Home Ownership: Separate and Unequal, 1940 to 2006,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Brief no. 1, November 2007.
House calls to Willie: Author interview, Dr. W. Craig Mitchell, April 27, 2001.
“He talks to God the way he would talk to you and me”: Margaret Ursprung, interview by Jen McCaffery, Roanoke Times, April 2001.
Willie’s fond recollections of snow cream: Author interview, Diane Rhodes, April 29, 2001.
He plays “Tipperary” first: Willie Muse’s singing recorded by Nancy and Howard Saunders, 1998–2001.
Willie’s advice to Jason: Author interview, Jason Banks, April 25, 2015.
Willie’s visits with nurses and children: Author interview, June Lowe, May 11, 2015.
Candy Shelton’s later life: Alex Shoumatoff, Florida Ramble (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 46–47.
Shelton’s last circus gig: “Dressing Room Gossip,” Billboard, Nov. 16, 1946.
Shelton’s life after circus: Author interviews, George Nicely and Bob Shelton, and city directories for Petersburg, VA, 1952 and 1955; Candy and Lillian Shelton lived in Centralia, VA, in the early to mid-1950s.
Shelton lost touch with extended family: Author interviews, Don Nicely and Bob Shelton, May 10, 2015.
Ministers from Dahomey: A major center in the Atlantic slave trade, Dahomey was taken over by the French in 1894 and, after independence, was renamed Benin.
the sideshow has mostly come and gone: Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 2, 280.
Shelton’s death: Florida Death Index, 1877–1998, ancestry.com. He was buried next to his wife, Lillian, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Inverness, FL.
Largely unnoticed success of Goody Shop: Author interview, Reginald Shareef, Sept. 10, 2014.
Big John Clarke as regular customer and friend: Author interview, Nancy Saunders, Feb. 11, 2015.
stunner of a spelling error: “Norfolk Southern Building Has Engraving Error,” Richmond (VA) Times–Dispatch, July 12, 1982.
Nancy’s lawsuit against Carilion on Willie’s behalf: Teresia McNabb, interview by Jen McCaffery, Roanoke Times; author interview, David Lawrence, May 12, 2015.
a settlement worth $250,000: Sandra Brown Kelly, “104-Year-Old Wins $250,000 Settlement; Man Suffered Burn at Carilion Hospital,” Roanoke Times, Sept. 9, 1997. According to documents on file at the courthouse, the settlement covered the duration of Willie’s home-health care. At the time of his death, he had cash assets of $7,004, $4,000 of which was divided equally among his four nieces, and the rest went to Nancy. Also listed among his belongings were his hospital gown, some clothing, and his guitar.
“Happy Birthday to You”: Originally written as “Good Morning to All” was written by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill in 1893, and the “Happy Birthday” change was copyrighted by their publisher in 1935, according to Paul Collins, “You Say It’s Your Birthday,” Slate, July 21, 2011.
Funeral hymn: Ronald Lanier sang the hymn “I Won’t Complain.”
Interviews: Erika Turner, Nancy Saunders
Recent voter-restriction efforts: “Voter ID in the States,” ballotpedia.org; see also Jim Rutenberg, “A Dream Undone,” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 2, 2015.
Increase in police brutality against unarmed black people: “The Counted: People Killed by Police in the U.S.,” as of August 2015, Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database.
Racial divide over discussions of race: 2015 YouGov survey: https://today.yougov.com/news/2015/03/18/whites-blacks-divided-whether-we-talk/.
Tuskegee Airmen buried in cemetery: LeRoi S. Williams, a second lieutenant in the 332 Fighter Group, was killed in a midair collision over Selfridge, Michigan, at the age of twenty-four. His younger brother, Eugene W. Williams, also a second lieutenant, died during the Berlin Airlift, also at age twenty-four. Roanoke’s Ralph V. Claytor, also a second lieutenant during World War II, died in 1993. All were alumni of Lucy Addison High School. From Tuskegee Airmen roster, obituaries, and Matt Chittum, “The Tuskegee Airmen,” Roanoke Times, Feb. 19, 2012.