The Showman and the Slave

The Showman and the Slave
ISBN-10
0674042654
ISBN-13
9780674042650
Category
History
Pages
288
Language
English
Published
2009-06-30
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Author
Benjamin Reiss

Description

Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an elderly enslaved woman said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. Seizing upon the novelty, the newly emerging commercial press turned her act--and especially her death--into one of the first media spectacles in American history.

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