#George and willie muse skin
#George and willie muse full

Barnes began showcasing the brothers in his circus as White Ecuadorian cannibals Eko and Iko.

To accentuate their already unusual appearance, their handler had the brothers grow out their hair into long white dreadlocks. They were falsely told that their mother was dead, and that they would never be returning home. Black albinos, being extremely rare, would have been an extremely lucrative attraction. They were initially exploited and then later hailed for their unintentional role in civil rights.īorn in the 1890’s the pair were scouted by sideshow agents and kidnapped in 1899 by bounty hunters working in the employ of an unknown sideshow promoter. The story of the two black albino brothers from Roanoke, Virginia is unique even in the bizarre world of freaks and sideshow. The Muses shared sideshow stages with Al Tomaini, founder of Gibsonton's Giant's Camp, and Macy recounts the last days of circus mogul John Ringling, a version a little less glossy than the one Sarasota residents usually hear.The Muse brothers had an incredible career. She also provides a fascinating history of the circus that leads at some points to the Tampa Bay area. Macy puts their story into its larger historical context, giving the reader an understanding of the virulent, often violent racism of the Jim Crow era, which affected the Muse family deeply. The Muse brothers would go back to the circus for many years before returning home for good, to be cared for by several generations of their female relatives, each as fierce as Harriett. 'That a black domestic worker had challenged such a formidable white-owned company at the height of Jim Crow was exceptionally unusual,' Macy writes. It was even more astounding when, after she found her sons on stage, playing and singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary (their favorite song), she told the unwilling manager she was taking them home.Īlmost unbelievable was her lawsuit against Ringling Bros. It was daring enough that she entered the segregated circus in a city where there were massive Ku Klux Klan parades, among its members the city's prosecuting attorney. It was one of those men who found the Muse brothers.

#George and willie muse full

State salary with full particulars.'Īnd men called freak hunters roamed cities and towns, looking for the next giant, fat lady, half-girl, dog-faced boy or other irresistible oddity.

Any act suitable for a real, live Pit Show. Billboard magazine routinely carried ads like this one: Millions of Americans attended the traveling shows, both for the big top's clowns and animals and for the sideshow's stranger attractions. Today they might be subjected to curious glances, but in the first decades of the century, America's most popular form of entertainment was the circus - and its sideshow.

#George and willie muse skin

Their features looked African-American, but their skin was milk-white, their eyes blue (and their vision poor, a part of the syndrome), their hair blond. George and Willie were born with albinism, a trait that ran in the family. Born in the last decade of the 19th century, George (the older by about three years) and Willie were the children of Cabell and Harriett Muse, black tobacco sharecroppers who lived in utter poverty in the tiny town of Truevine, Va., 'a speck of land where slaves and their descendants became sharecroppers, then sewing-machine operators, then unemployed workers before, finally - those who could afford to, anyway - they fled,' Macy writes