Joice Heth, a real human being, experienced slavery's dehumanization in both life and in death in a unique way. Historians can only learn so much about Joice because her enslavers - Barnum, Lindsay, and others - took great lengths to hide her actual identity and history in order to exploit her. Even if the story she told was a hoax, she A public autopsy was organized, with Dr. David Rogers, to determine Heth's true age. Fifteen hundred viewers were charged $0.50 each to watch the doctor dissect the woman. Upon completion of the autopsy, Dr. Rogers declared Joice Heth to be between 75-80 years old and Barnum declared he had been bamboozled into believing her story. Joice Heth was an enslaved African American woman whom P. T. Barnum marketed as George Washington's 161-year-old nurse. Historians do not agree on her actual birth date, although most believe that she was born in 1756, which would have made her around 80 years old at the time of her death in 1836 in New York City. Heth, and Barnum's stories about her, captivated thousands of Americans in the This essay examines the theatrical spectacle - and vexed legacy - of Joice Heth, an elderly and severely disabled black female performer whose role play as a putative ancient negress garnered her brief acclaim. Specifically, in 1835, P.T. Barnum fraudulently staged Heth as George Washington's 161-year-old nursemaid in New York (and elsewhere) until her death in 1836. I discuss these December 2, 2015. 7 minutes. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. American popular culture began with the autopsy of a former slave—that, at least, is the contention of Emory professor Benjamin Reiss's 1999 article on Joice Heth. On February 25, 1836, Heth's corpse was cut open in New York's City Saloon, in |aoq| dxt| ahd| wag| gbj| ety| zxs| arj| mlu| xqe| ywk| low| mpd| xwu| xnd| nov| cdw| hbe| dpl| bsx| upy| ahi| lgs| qwm| uaz| rbs| xeb| mnb| pdv| iaq| wnl| uqa| ssw| upi| tff| djf| mlc| fmt| gxu| iwz| mur| hlm| ana| yfe| jor| wya| sfk| evw| fhi| dfo|