"she, like many city people, is simply trying to find herself"

Hotel view: Old slavery-freedom border.

Call it seredipity, but I was on my way to the Historians Against Slavery conference in Cincinnati while the students in this course were studying the life of Eliza Potter. Born in New York, Potter, an antebellum woman of mixed race, moved to Cincinnati in 1840. She is best known for traveling to many places including London and Paris. The assigned readings for three weeks is her memoir, A Hairdresser’s Experience in the High Life, which reveals many details about her experiences with the upper class in many places including Cincinnati, where, as she tells us, she lived in her own house under her “own vine and own fig tree.”  Given her cosmopolitan worldview,  I asked the students whether they thought she was one of the “city people” that Gunther Barth describes. All of the students generally said she was though some were able to see the degree to which she was an outsider as a woman of color. Said A.J., “She is always kind of sneaking around to see what’s going on around her, almost as if she wants to know what the high life is like without being able to be a part of it.” Added Lauren, “Barth talks about city people’s search for identity in the new city structure and Potter’s eclectic experiences  is her way of trying to find herself as a mulatto woman in a society that didn’t really have a place for her.” Lewis wrote, “She recounts endless stories that were shared by people not because she was their friend, but because she was their hairdresser.” David added, “She travels around, but she is only a hairdresser.” Anne Marie maintained, “She seems to be easily bored. Being in a city as opposed to a rural area is able to hold her attention far longer.” Aaron offered, “One aspect of Eliza that I thought made her appear very ‘modern’ as Barth describes it was her ability to be critical of those around her…White women’s vanity is something with which she has issues.” Evelyn stated, “She is so ‘forward-thinking’ even though she is a mulatto woman. She is very independent and strongly opinionated. She has no problem telling a wealthy, white child that she will not call him ‘master.’” Bryon said, “Although her situation is very unusual at the time, she, like many  in the city, is simply trying to find herself. She describes the joys of walking around beautiful promenades and gardens in cities. She is very self-conscious of her appearance.” Finally, Michael said, “She is a city person like the people in Barth’s book who are constantly moving.” In their ongoing attention to city life during the nineteenth century as it existed in many places including Tuscaloosa, the students will visit the Jemison Mansion next week. I am very interested in the ways in which they might see this mansion in the manner Eliza Potter might have if she ever had a chance to visit this structure. She tells us pointedly that she wanted to visit Alabama, but her uncle advised her not to do as much. But what if she had? What if she had been invited to style the hair of a white woman who resided in the Jemison Mansion? What would she have seen and found worthy of sharing with others? As an aside, I return to Alabama greatly inspired by efforts to spread the awareness about human trafficking and the ways in which we can make linkages between it and slavery in the United States. Given Potter's low opinion of slavery as it existed in her lifetime, I suspect were she living, she would be inspired, too.

Adrian College students address human trafficking.