Mabel Cairns Farrell
"The White in the Crow's Wing" An Unrecorded Romantic Novella About Jack Johnson and his White Wives, c. 1916
28pp; paper covers
7 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches
A fascinating, seemingly-unrecorded novella described as “a romance of Jack Johnson and his white wives,” published in Des Moines, Iowa, by Mabel Cairns Farrell, c. 1916. It tells a fictionalized...
A fascinating, seemingly-unrecorded novella described as “a romance of Jack Johnson and his white wives,” published in Des Moines, Iowa, by Mabel Cairns Farrell, c. 1916. It tells a fictionalized account of the life of Johnson's second wife, Etta Duryea (here called "Ettie Youree"). It touches on her suicide in Chicago in 1912 (in a chapter titled "The Scarlet Thing is Done") and then concludes with his marriage to Lucille Cameron and exile abroad. While certainly a product of its time, the text is rather remarkable for its choice of subject matter, sympathetic portraits, and frankness of tone.
Though we cannot locate any extant copies of the book, it advertised in a pair of Black newspapers in 1916. One, published in the Des Moines Bystander, proclaimed the work has “drawn back the curtain of censure, cast aside the shackles of prejudice and writes from an intimate standpoint with an unbiased pen.”
Little is known about the book’s author, Mabel Cairns Farrell. She was born in Missouri in 1905, was raised in Louisiana, and by 1916 was living in Des Moines. Under the pen name Peggy Poe, Farrell authored a number of children's books, including an ongoing series of stories for “The Brownies’ Books,” a monthly journal for Black children published by W.E.B. Dubois. Her stories for “Brownies” series involved a young African American boy named “Happy.” Other works of Farrell’s include “How Daddy Possum and Pappy Rabbit Played Santa Claus,” “The Put-It-Off Folks, or Why Pappy Rabbit has Such a Short Tail,” and the play “Li’l Miss Gingersnap.” She died in Los Angeles in 1927.
Though we cannot locate any extant copies of the book, it advertised in a pair of Black newspapers in 1916. One, published in the Des Moines Bystander, proclaimed the work has “drawn back the curtain of censure, cast aside the shackles of prejudice and writes from an intimate standpoint with an unbiased pen.”
Little is known about the book’s author, Mabel Cairns Farrell. She was born in Missouri in 1905, was raised in Louisiana, and by 1916 was living in Des Moines. Under the pen name Peggy Poe, Farrell authored a number of children's books, including an ongoing series of stories for “The Brownies’ Books,” a monthly journal for Black children published by W.E.B. Dubois. Her stories for “Brownies” series involved a young African American boy named “Happy.” Other works of Farrell’s include “How Daddy Possum and Pappy Rabbit Played Santa Claus,” “The Put-It-Off Folks, or Why Pappy Rabbit has Such a Short Tail,” and the play “Li’l Miss Gingersnap.” She died in Los Angeles in 1927.