Racist print promoting anti-abolitionists' fears of multiracial personal relationships. Created by Edward Williams Clay in 1839.
On December 13, 1893, Judge Householder of Knoxville, Tennessee, sent an entire family to jail on felony miscegenation charges. Setting bond at $500, he jailed a black man named Jim McFarland, and his mother, Ms. McFarland, a black woman, Henry Whitehead, a black man, Harriet Smith, who local authorities reported was a white woman, and her children from prior relationships with white men, Lydia Smith and John Smith.
At the time of arrest, the multigenerational family lived in the same household. The court’s order left a young child at home without a caregiver. The family spent over a month in jail before facing trial in January. Newspapers noted that Smith had reported to them “with shameless candor,” that she was actually a black woman—while her mother was white, her father was a light-skinned black man—and that she had never pretended to be white.
Local news speculated further that since Smith’s children had white fathers, those children living with black men and women might violate the miscegenation codes as written “even should the taint of negro blood be traced to the remote degree claimed.” Local media and the white Knoxville community praised Squire Householder’s actions, reporting that he “came to the rescue of the community” by “starting a war on the crime of miscegenation.”
Ultimately, a month after her arrest, Smith was tried before a jury that determined she was “of colored stock,” and acquitted her and Henry Whitehead of miscegenation. However, the jury still convicted them both of lewdness for living together, and they were each sentenced to 11 months in the workhouse. The cases against her children were dropped by the prosecutor after this verdict.
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