The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family

by Mark Auslander

What does one contested account of an enslaved woman tell us about our difficult racial past? Part history, part anthropology, and part detective story, The Accidental Slaveowner traces, from the 1850s to the present day, how different groups of people have struggled with one powerful story about slavery.

For over a century and a half, residents of Oxford, Georgia (“the birthplace of Emory University”), have told and retold stories of the enslaved woman known as “Kitty” and her owner, Methodist bishop James Osgood Andrew, first president of Emory’s board of trustees. Bishop Andrew’s ownership of Miss Kitty and other enslaved persons triggered the 1844 great national schism of the Methodist Episcopal Church, presaging the Civil War. For many local whites, Bishop Andrew was only “accidentally” a slaveholder, and when offered her freedom, Kitty willingly remained in slavery out of loyalty to her master. Local African Americans, in contrast, tend to insist that Miss Kitty was the Bishop’s coerced lover and that she was denied her basic freedoms throughout her life.

Mark Auslander approaches these opposing narratives as “myths,” not as falsehoods but as deeply meaningful and resonant accounts that illuminate profound enigmas in American history and culture. After considering the multiple, powerful ways that the Andrew-Kitty myths have shaped perceptions of race in Oxford, at Emory, and among southern Methodists, Auslander sets out to uncover the “real” story of Kitty and her family. His years-long feat of collaborative detective work results in a series of discoveries and helps open up important arenas for reconciliation, restorative justice, and social healing.

Genres: History, Anthropology

376 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2011

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much here. I'll be rereading this, for several reasons. I'm interested in Emory and the Georgia debt to slave labor. I'm interested in these fascinating families and places. I'm grateful for Auslander's work, in archives, classrooms, and especially, communities, well done.
Highest recommendation.

[Bayliss Camp · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books one wishes one had written. Perforce, there are books one is glad have been published. Separately, there are also (it must be admitted) books that one wonders whether they are read, and by whom. In one’s heart of hearts, if one is being completely honest, there is always already the question of whether those two circles - books one wishes one had written, and books one has confidence will be read - actually overlap, and to what extent. This is most acutely an issue with manuscripts published by academic houses, barring specific unicorns like Matt Desmond - whose afterword is a harrowing testament to the terrible toll required of truly great ethnography - or Barbara Ehrenreich - whose books are in any case published by an imprint of Hachette.

All of this is a long way of saying that I wish I’d written this book, I am deeply grateful it’s been published, and I have absolutely no idea how many people would/will actually read it. Who, besides whackamole dilettantes like myself would read - and not just read, but be profoundly moved by - an obsessively detailed exploration of the myth-making surrounding the life of Kitty Boyd? Emory alumni (and maybe not even just that subset that attend Emory at Oxford)? Methodists? White liberals? Anthropologists? African-American intellectuals?

Part of what gets me about this book is that it’s very much in the spirit of a project my mother and I have talked about, and never really done much about, for years now: an “outsider’s” family history. And so when I pick up a book, written by a Yankee Jew no less, about the thick web of lies carefully woven over the years by the prelates of the Methodist church to explain for themselves how they credibly could imagine themselves to be liberal, I am stirred. When it happens to be about the church - by which I mean, quite specifically, the physical building - in which we held my grandfather’s funeral, I can feel the ground shift under my feet. When it happens to include a photograph in which, if you pick up a magnifying glass, you can see my great-grandparents’ headstone, sitting maybe thirty paces East of Kitty’s memorial, I get vertigo. And when the cover is the exact shade of red of the clay we mauled open in order to inter my uncle’s ashes, I have to rethink almost entirely my place in the world.

The other thing that gets me about this book is how Prof. Auslander embeds in the architecture of his narrative a demonstration of his main thesis: that the story you get is in no small part a product of the source material. So if you consult published narrative documents (public letters, sermons, biographies, newspaper articles, etc.) you get a very particular version, compared to what you get if you consult administrative documents (wills, census records, etc.), oral histories, or even landscapes and architecture. This is not an exactly a shocking thesis for anyone with even passing knowledge of at least one of the major fields within the humanities and social sciences. But it is rare (and admirable) to see that thesis so rigorously worked out in a full manuscript.

So, yes: this is a good book. But who, besides weirdos like myself would think so?

[oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful. I have been lucky enough to take a class taught by Dr. Auslander this semester and this book has created a great level of insight, Dr. Auslander is a gem.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great exploration of the personal stories intertwined with the legacy of slavery and of Emory University’s foundation in this complicated history.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Auslander is both author and catalyst in this history that resurrects lives long buried under the heavy clay soil of self-serving agendas. That any healing can take place, that the actors in this drama can move beyond denial to even a glimmer of awareness, is remarkable given how entrenched the hurts and wrongs of past and present. I was gripped by Auslander's story of discovery, and applaud his careful correctness of phrasing to finally do more good than harm to a tangled, difficult subject. The careful attention given to genealogy research, both on behalf of Catherine (Miss Kitty) Boyd's ancestors and descendants, and on behalf of the "Greek chorus" of 40 slaves also owned by Bishop Andrew's family, was like a balm in Gilead. Thank goodness this book's time has come, one small step in a long journey of healing that will, hopefully, continue.