The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn tells the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796–1833), the enslaved, mixed-race wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, owner of Blue Spring Farm and U.S. vice president under Martin Van Buren. Though Johnson never freed Chinn, he often delegated to her the management of his property, including Choctaw Academy, a boarding school for Indigenous men and boys. Chinn, while enslaved, had substantial control over the couple’s social, financial, and personal affairs, including overseeing Blue Spring’s enslaved labor force.
What makes Chinn’s life exceptional is the power that Johnson invested in her, the opportunities the couple’s relationship afforded her and her daughters, and their community’s tacit acceptance of the family — up to a point. When the family left their farm, they faced steep limits: pews at the rear of church, burial in separate graveyards, exclusion from town dances, and more. Outliving Chinn, Johnson was ruined politically by his relationship with her, and Myers compellingly demonstrates that it wasn’t interracial sex that led to his downfall but his refusal to keep it —and Julia Chinn — behind closed doors.
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. She has been the recipient of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; the Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians; and the Anna Julia Cooper-C.L.R. James Book Prize from the National Council for Black Studies.
In addition to her scholarly work, Myers is regularly interviewed about racial justice matters.
This event is free. No registration necessary.
