In the second part of Transy’s Creative Intelligence series, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers spoke about ‘Invisibility and Erasure’ and how these themes relate to her book, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn. You might be wondering, just as I was, how a vice president’s wife can be almost completely erased from any records. The answer to this question is systematic racism in America, and specifically, in Kentucky.
Dr. Myers starts her talk by showing images of quilts that belonged to Julia Chinn’s grandson, and states that since there aren’t any confirmed portraits of Chinn, she uses these quilts to represent her and her family. Myers decided to have one of these quilts as the border of the book cover. She compares these quilts to her journey in telling Chinn’s story by saying that it was “like putting together a patchwork quilt”. Unlike most quilt projects, Myers had to go to great lengths in searching for the pieces of fabric before sewing them together in writing her book.
Myers then gave meaningful context surrounding the man whom Chinn was enslaved by and supposedly married to: Richard Mentor Johnson.
Born in 1780, Johnson is dubbed a “war hero politician who killed Tecumseh during the War of 1812”. Despite his not killing Tecumseh, there’s more focus put on this than on his being a plantation owner and slaveholder. Myers points out that Johnson also claims to have attended Transy, despite there being no archival records to support this claim. There are records of him serving for forty-four years in public service, four of which were as Vice President. He also holds the title of the first Kentuckian to hold a seat in Congress. His time in the Senate is less glamorous, though. He lost his seat in 1829, and the reasons are unclear; however, this may be due to his relationship with Julia Chinn. This supposed relationship is the foundation of Myers’ book, as it has been tried to be covered up for decades.
There are many layers to their relationship. The first being that they’re around 16 to 17 years apart. The reason why there isn’t an exact number of years between them is that it’s unclear when Julia was born, as she was born enslaved to Richard’s father, Robert. The Johnson family states that she had her first child at the age of 15 or 16 in 1812, which would have made her born in either 1796 or 1797. Considering the age gap between them and Richard being admitted to the bar in 1802 and elected to the Kentucky state house in 1804, there’s a good chance that they would’ve had little to no contact with each other growing up.
Another layer to their relationship is that Julia was enslaved and had never been free. When Johnson was back in Kentucky in 1810, Julia was selected by his mother to be his housekeeper. This decision was sparked by his receiving a significant amount of land, on which he built a mansion called Blue Spring Farm. This title of ‘housekeeper’ was often given to enslaved women who were white men’s mistresses, and there’s speculation around whether their relationship was consensual or not.
The meaning behind the title proved to be true in 1811 when Julia and Richard’s sexual relationship began, resulting in their first child together in 1812. Even though they ended up having two children together, they were never legally married because, until 1967, Kentucky didn’t allow interracial marriage. There are speculations that they secretly got married in the church that the Johnsons founded, Great Crossing Baptist Church.
Despite multiple people claiming that the couple was married, Dr. Myers couldn’t find any official papers documenting their marriage. She explained that this could be because the Scott County courthouse had been burned three times prior to the Civil War. Although there are no official records of their marriage, Richard referred to Julia as his ‘bride’ in a letter to his friend, which suggests that they likely acted as husband and wife, despite the absence of an official marriage and the power imbalance between Richard, who was Julia’s slaveholder.
Myers puts heavy emphasis on the speculative nature of Julia’s life and her relationship with Richard. There are aspects of the story that we know are true, though. One being that Julia was literate and responsible. She spoke with local businessmen, oversaw the estates, and helped run the boarding school on their property, Choctaw Academy. She was responsible for being sure that every student was fed, healthy, clean, and clothed. Julia kept the school running. She also had her own house on the Blue Spring Farm, which was separate from Richard’s house, and had access to his line of credit, so she had a considerable amount of privilege at this point in history. Due to her enslavement, she wasn’t able to own anything and could have lost her house at any time. She was also in an odd position where she was enslaved, but also in charge of the slaves on the property.
When Richard was gone in D.C., the enslaved laborers took advantage of this, knowing that she struggled to assert her authority, and simply didn’t have as much authority as Richard. This constant taking care of the farm and the school ended in July 1833 when Julia died. We see just how much the success of the school was dependent on Julia in the rapid deterioration of Choctaw Academy, which shut down 15 years later in 1848. She wasn’t in the Johnson family cemetery at Great Crossing Church because even though she and Richard were most likely married, she was still enslaved. In fact, we still don’t know where she was buried.
The work that Dr. Myers did in order to tell Julia’s story is immeasurable. She met with Julia’s descendants, contextualized the timeline of Julia’s life and her relationship with Richard, and dug through public and church records. Through the writing of her book and this talk, one of Myers’ messages is that Julia’s story isn’t interesting. It’s important. The fact that barely anybody knows who Julia was illuminates how the U.S. continues to refuse to acknowledge the history of slavery and interracial relationships. All history needs to be taught—the good and the bad.
