Try to imagine that one day two of your children simply vanished. Poof — they were gone. Over a century ago a mother living in the South had exactly that nightmarish experience. But there’s much more to this story.
Beth Macy sifted through a mountain of material to try to figure out what really happened that day. She assembles the facts and stunning details of this fascinating true story in “Truevine — Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South.”
Macy had recently published her first book, the best-selling “Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local — and Helped Save an American Town” when she noticed a post on Facebook. It was a picture of George and Willie Muse, the two kidnapped brothers. The author first became aware of this compelling drama during her time as a newspaper reporter for the Roanoke (Virginia) Times.
At that point Macy, a native of Urbana, realized that she might have found her next book project. Fifteen years ago Macy had co-written a series about the Muses for the Roanoke Times. She contacted her co-writer and was grateful to discover the other reporter had kept a 16-pound box of files on these mysterious brothers.
Macy conducted interviews and scoured archives gathering information to try to understand what really happened on that long ago day when the brothers had been abducted from a tobacco field and what became of them afterwards.
Macy describes what made the boys such tempting kidnap victims back in 1899: “George and Willie Muse were different. They were genetic anomalies: albinos born to black parents. Reared at a time when a black man could be jailed or even killed just for looking at a white woman — reckless eyeballing, the charge was officially called — the Muse brothers were doubly cursed.”
This was an era with no movies, no television, not even radio. Circuses were one of the rare entertainments. Numerous circus trains toured the land providing entertainment and grotesque amusements. Circus sideshow acts featured performers who were different. There were big people, little people, fat people, thin people. There were bearded ladies and people who had birth defects.
These were cruel spectacles — the Muse boys became part of the show, enslaved as sideshow freaks. Their hair grew into stunning dreadlocks. They were dressed up in outfits and given musical instruments that they soon learned to play quite well. They got variously billed as savages from Africa and South America. Even as aliens from Mars. They were paid nothing.
They spent years as captive performers. Their eventual “owner” told them their mother was dead. She had kept searching for them. Their circus eventually came to Roanoke. Mother was in the audience. They had not forgotten her. The moment when they spotted her in the crowd and what happened next is one of the most powerful scenes that has ever been written about.
One of the brothers lived to be over 100 years old. This true story will knock some readers right out of their recliners.
About the Author