Came across this today. Make me think of this thread.
Varina Howell Davis: The Black First Lady of the Confederacy?
April 8, 2014 at 1:47am
By Alex Sparks
Recently while doing some reading online about history, my favorite subject, I happened to come across the following photograph.
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This is a photo of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, and his young wife Varina Howell Davis. What immediately jumps out at you about this photograph? When I first saw it what literally leaped off the screen and shouted in my face with a bullhorn was the following thought: "This woman was of mixed race! She was black!".
But wait... how could
that be? We are talking about the wife of the President of the Confederacy. And everyone knows that the Confederacy was **** in it's beliefs.
This compelled me to do some research about this woman. Who was she?
According to the following biography from the website of the University of Ohio...
"Varina Howell Davis was born at her family plantation, the Briers, near Natchez, Mississippi in 1826. As a plantation owner’s daughter, Davis received her education from a private tutor and later attended finishing school. She was seventeen when she met Jefferson Davis while visiting the Hurricane, the plantation of his older brother, Joseph Emory Davis. “Uncle Joe” was an old family friend, but it was the first time she met any of his extended family. Davis was taken with her beauty and intelligence, and by the time her visit ended two months later she and Davis were unofficially engaged. Margaret Howell, her mother, objected to the engagement. She was not convinced that Davis, widowed and eighteen years older than her daughter, was a good match for Varina. She thought he was too brooding, and feared that Varina would be second fiddle to his former wife. Eventually, however, she gave in and they were married on February 26, 1845."
Further reading lead me to learn that while her mother was a southerner, Varina's father William was from New Jersey where his father Richard had been the governor. Like the above biography stated, William Howell owned a plantation there in Natchez with many slaves. Varina's mother was Margaret Louisa Kempe (1806–1867), born in Prince William County, Virginia, of a wealthy planter family who moved to Mississippi before 1816. Her parents were Colonel Joseph Kempe (sometimes spelled Kemp), a Scots-Irish immigrant from northern Ireland who became a planter and major landowner, and Margaret Graham, born in Prince William County. From everything I could find, it seemed that her family's ancestry, at least their "official" ancestry, was 100% European.
I looked through other photos of Varina, however, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was not mistaken with my initial impression:
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It looks to me as that Varina got older, her mixed heritage became even more apparent in her physical appearance.
All of this raises multiple issues in one's mind, no doubt. How is it that the Presidenct of a government like the Confederate States of America could be married to a woman who appeared to so obviously be of mixed heritage, and it not cause any kind of stir? When I looked up the subject of Varina Howell Davis, and her apparent mixed heritage, I could find almost
nothing about it online other than a couple of blog posts from people who came across photographs of her, and had the same thoughts I did. It seems to be a subject totally ignored by history.
Through a friend, however, I learned about the story of a woman named America Amanda Dickson, pictured below.
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From
GeorgiaEncyclopedia.org:
"Amanda America Dickson, the daughter of a slave and her owner, became one of the wealthiest black women in nineteenth-century America. She was born on November 20 or 21, 1849, on the Hancock County plantation of her father, the famous white agricultural reformer, David Dickson (1809-85). Her birth was the result of the rape of her slave mother, Julia Frances Lewis Dickson, when Julia was twelve years old. At the time, David Dickson was forty and the wealthiest planter in the county. Amanda America Dickson spent her childhood and adolescence in the house of her white grandmother and owner, Elizabeth Sholars Dickson, where she learned to read and write and play the piano—the survival skills of a young lady but not ordinarily the opportunities of a slave. According to the Dickson family oral history, David Dickson doted on Amanda, and Julia quite openly became his concubine and housekeeper.
Continue Reading here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/alex...irst-lady-of-the-confederacy/697470626962175/