Born into slavery in southeast Virginia. Her owners, Jonathon Eldred Thomas and his wife, Martha, had a daughter of their own, born ten years earlier, whom they had called Emma. A decade later, in characteristically proprietary fashion, the white family apparently bestowed the same name on the baby of a favored slave. Like her Caucasian namesake, the younger, darker-complexioned girl grew up on the Thomas estate not far from fabled Champion Swamp and the town of Smithfield.
(Exerpt from Homelands and Waterways by Adele Logan Alexander, Vintage Press, July 2000)
(Exerpt from Homelands and Waterways by Adele Logan Alexander, Vintage Press, July 2000)
Born into slavery in southeast Virginia. Her owners, Jonathon Eldred Thomas and his wife, Martha, had a daughter of their own, born ten years earlier, whom they had called Emma. A decade later, in characteristically proprietary fashion, the white family apparently bestowed the same name on the baby of a favored slave. Like her Caucasian namesake, the younger, darker-complexioned girl grew up on the Thomas estate not far from fabled Champion Swamp and the town of Smithfield.
(Exerpt from Homelands and Waterways by Adele Logan Alexander, Vintage Press, July 2000)
(Exerpt from Homelands and Waterways by Adele Logan Alexander, Vintage Press, July 2000)
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