Descendants of Celia and Robert Newsom Speak

Traci Wilson-Kleekamp

doi:10.3390/genealogy4020049

Abstract

This paper deploys narrative inquiry and analysis to capture the oral history of two families’ intergenerational memory of an African American woman named Celia who was hanged in 1855 for killing her owner Robert Newsom. It is the first scholarly investigation into the intergenerational memory of both black and white descendants of Robert Newsom, and the first to be conducted utilizing the theory of critical family history. Through the paradigm of Black Feminist Thought, the paper analyzes the power imbalances embedded in the narrative about family relations, especially those that conjure race, gender roles and class produced through oral history.

Highlights

We were half-way through the interview when Theresa McClain1 leaned slightly towards me across the table and whispered in a soft but firm voice that she was so proud of Celia for defending herself and killing Newsom
It had taken two years just to track down McClain, the oldest living descendent of Celia, a slave hanged in 1855 in Fulton, Missouri for killing her owner Robert Newsom
To inquire into the intergenerational memories narrated by two 90-year old descendants

Summary

Introduction

It was the Spring of 2018 and this statement from the dignified, 88-year-old great-great-granddaughter of Celia coaxed a smile from me as I noted that the most poignant and pertinent moment of the lunchtime interview I had worked so arduously to plan had likely taken place before we even got started. Newsom had subjected Celia to serial rape since he had purchased her in Audrain County, Missouri sometime in 1851, when she was 14 years old She was 19, pregnant with Newsom’s second child, and the mother of two daughters aged 3 and 9 months, when the trial began for his murder. Black women were excluded from being recognized as women and mothers, over and against “the definition of true womanhood as a value system that recognized submissiveness, piety, domesticity, and purity” (Welter 1966, as cited in Battle 2016, p. 110)

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion