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MARIAL CENTER COLLOQUIUM
Mark Auslander "The Myth of Kitty: Narratives of Slavery and Kinship in a Georgia Community" Click here to access this paper in pdf format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this file. Adobe Acrobat can be dowloaded for free. Wednesday, Sept. 20, 4:00 PM The MARIAL Center Emory West, 4th Floor, Room 415E ABSTRACT
The paper explores the most widely known local mytho-historical narrative in the city of Oxford, Georgia, the story of "Kitty," an enslaved "mulatto"woman who lived in Oxford during the 1840s. In many local white families the Kitty legend, intimately associated with her gravesite and with the ìcottageî she once occupied, has for generations been understood as a moving tale of loyalty and noble suffering. Kitty is widely believed to have refused manumission and to have stayed loyal to the family of Methodist Episcopal Bishop James Andrew, first chairman of the Board of Trustees of Emory College. Many African-American families, in contrast, understand Kitty's story as one of unredeemed tragedy and oppression. They maintain that Kitty was the Bishop's coerced mistress, and that her children were most likely fathered by him. Versions of this contested myth have long been transmitted through local white and African American family networks, as varied actors have sought to bring different kinds of narrative closure to the story. This essay concentrates on three problems raised by the nearly 160 year history of the Kitty myth: (1) why have the mainstream mythic narratives of Kitty, and the physical locations associated with her, remained so deeply resonant for local white families? (2) Why -- at a time when Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmingsí liaison has been widely accepted in mainstream American public culture-- has it is has been so difficult for African-American counter-narratives of Kitty to be circulated beyond the private confines of black households? (3) What do these contested and spatialized narratives of Kitty suggest about the overall texture of remembrance in the linked white and black families of the American south? Click here to access this paper in pdf format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this file. Adobe Acrobat can be dowloaded for free. For hard copies of this paper, please contact the MARIAL Center.
DIRECTIONS TO THE MARIAL CENTER Convenient and quick transportation to Emory West is available every 10 minutes from the Campus via shuttle (Route W, which can be found on the corner of Asbury Circle and Pierce Drive, Along Pierce Drive, or in Front of he Administration Building). It is a 5 minute ride. Or you can drive and park close in at Emory West, 1256 Briarcliff Rd. (From the Oxford campus take I-20 west to the Moreland Avenue exit. Go north about three miles on Moreland/Briarcliff. The Emory West campus will be on your left, off of Briarcliff.) Tell the receptionist atthe front window that you are here for the MARIAL Center lecture. Refreshments will be served. We look forward to seeing you at this and future colloquia.
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