2024-04-07 22:59:57
Image sourceCourtesy Cassandra Fay
Caption,
No portrait painted during his lifetime has been found of Henry, however the American artist Cassandra Fay made one a few years ago.
Article information
- Author, Juan Francisco Alonso
- Scroll, BBC News World
-
1 hour
Priscilla Henry. For most in the United States and the rest of the world this name means nothing.
This, despite the fact that the African American woman who lived in the 19th century had a life worthy of a Hollywood movie.
Henry was born and lived much of his life enslaved. However, upon achieving his freedom he began to amass one of the largest fortunes of his time, which allowed him to buy the plantation where he came into the world. And, all of this, thanks to the fact that he headed a controversial business that until then was dominated by white people: prostitution.
BBC Mundo consulted experts and documents to investigate the life of Henry, whom some consider not only a promoter of racial integration, but a pioneer of businesswomen and a defender of sexual freedom.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Henry and his six siblings were born slaves on a plantation in the state of Alabama, where they spent the first years of their lives working.
A long way
Henry was born in 1819 on a plantation in the town of Florence, in the southern state of Alabama, wrote University of Wisconsin (USA) professor Ashley B. Cundiff in her doctoral thesis dedicated to the culture of the brothels in the North American country.
The woman, who was the oldest of six children, remained working in the fields belonging to southern landowner James Jackson Jr. at least until 1865, because he refused to release her and the other people he had under his power. This, despite the fact that slavery had been formally abolished by Abraham Lincoln’s government two years earlier with the Emancipation Declaration.
As soon as she was freed, the woman went to “Mound City”, as the city of St. Louis (Missouri) was known at that time, about 615 kilometers north of her home state, where she began working as a domestic worker. .
“Henry went to St. Louis because at that time the laundresses earned more money there for their work than in other parts of the country,” American journalist Julius Hunter, who told STLPR, the public radio network of the southern city, He is the author of the book “Priscilla and Babe: From the Shackles of Slavery to Millionaire Madams in Victorian St. Louis.”
The journalist spent six years searching through libraries, public and church records, as well as local newspaper archives for his research on Henry and another madam of the time: Sarah “Babe” Conor.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Located on the banks of the famous Mississippi River, the city of St. Louis was fertile ground for prostitution in the second half of the 19th century.
A dead queen, a queen set
But the freedwoman spent a short time washing clothes and cleaning hotel rooms and stays, as she soon discovered a much more lucrative business: sex.
As in other cities along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, prostitution in St. Louis was a thriving industry.
“In the 19th century in St. Louis there were 5,000 prostitutes and it had a population of barely 350,000 inhabitants,” Hunter explained.
After the Civil War, the city became a magnet for disenchanted veterans, former slaves, adventurers and fortune hunters, which explains the rise of the sex business. The activity became so lucrative that in 1870 local authorities temporarily legalized sex work and began taxing brothels and registered prostitutes.
Henry’s foray into this sector was not intentional, but the product of a tragedy: the hotel where he worked burned down; and, therefore, he ended up in a boarding house where women lived who sold their bodies.
And although she had no notable physical attributes, on the contrary some reviews of the time simply described her as strong or robust, running into Thomas Howard, a former Confederate soldier who was her lover, opened the doors to the world of paid sex.
However, this love and business relationship ended badly. Howard, who came to manage Henry’s estate for her, defrauded her and was even accused of killing her. A niece of the madam claimed that the former uniformed man poisoned Henry with the help of her personal cook, Florence Williams, Professor Cundiff reported in her investigation.
Local census records reveal that the woman began running a brothel that employed five black women between the ages of 19 and 30, which “became a meeting point for sailors and adventurers, both white and black,” described the newspaper “St. Louis Post Dispach” in November 1895, in the obituary she published on the occasion of Henry’s death.
“In the city there was a madam, Eliza Haycraft, who was the queen of the brothels and who upon her death in 1871 left a void that Henry and those who supported her took advantage of, because they considered that it was time for women of color to enter that field. . At the time of her death, Haycraft left US$30 million in property and money,” Hunter explained.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
The abolition of slavery decreed by Lincoln in 1863 did not impact Henry and his family, but years later, because their owner refused to free them.
building an empire
St. Louis’s liberal stance on prostitution contrasted with its conservative stance on race relations. Thus, after the Civil War, state authorities passed laws that toughened prison sentences for those who attempted to marry people who had a different skin color and against those who had sexual relations with people of other races.
To avoid problems with the authorities, the businesswoman had segregated premises. In some she served white people and in others she served people of color. And although white men were allowed to visit both establishments, this was not the case with black men.
“She structured her business so that she could serve the white male audience, but respect the laws against miscegenation,” Cundiff said.
“She understood that these laws sought to prevent black men from interacting with white women, but that they were more lax when white men were with black women,” he added.
“(Henry) maintained a long relationship with the police to maintain this precarious division of houses by race and, therefore, his business enjoyed protection,” the expert stated in her investigation.
This ability to circumvent regulations allowed Henry to make his business flourish and over time the madam bought several houses in the city, which she converted into brothels or rented them to other colleagues to operate as brothels.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Henry abided by restrictions against miscegenation, although he found loopholes that allowed him to grow his business.
Being illiterate also did not prevent the woman from amassing a great fortune, estimated at US$100,000 at the time of her death in 1895, about US$3,700,000 today.
“Most of her business was done by shaking hands, and since sex work was a prohibited industry for most of her business life, making sure things were not written down was an advantage for her,” she explained to BBC Mundo. the professor at the Center for African American Studies at the American University of Washington (USA), Mali Collins.
“Henry also knew the demand of his market: St. Louis is located on the lower Mississippi River, where rivermen and businessmen visited to trade goods. Being a busy city with its own thriving “Red Light District” (where many brothels were owned by Henry), the businesswoman monopolized the escort industry,” she added.
image copyrightCourtesy St. Louis Post Dispatch
Caption,
Although the press widely reported Henry’s death in November 1895, with the passage of time his name fell into oblivion.
A pioneer vindicated
In the last years of her life, Henry returned to her native Alabama, but no longer as a servant but as a mistress and mistress.
The woman made a most unusual gesture and bought the plantation where she and her siblings were born and were forced to work as slaves for a good part of their lives.
“This should have been a turning point in national and local news regarding the growing change in business that black American men and women were experiencing before the turn of the century,” Collins said.
However, the media of the time did not focus on this or on the business acumen that the woman demonstrated throughout her life.
“The evil and notorious old Priscilla Henry has died,” a local newspaper headlined upon learning of her death and immediately accused her of fostering “depraved passions.”
As time went by, Henry’s memory faded, something that at the time of his death seemed impossible, since the news of his death was reported in newspapers as far away as New York and hundreds of people lined the streets of St. Louis. to say goodbye to her coffin, the St. Louis Historical Press Association recalled in a book titled “Pioneers, Rule Breakers and Rebels: 50 Unstoppable Women of St. Louis.”
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
Experts regret that Henry’s figure has been forgotten in St. Louis and the rest of the United States, despite the contributions he made in racial and business matters.
Professor Collins, for her part, considers that the madam’s neglect is an injustice, since she contributed not only to the fight against racial discrimination but also to the liberation of women.
“That he ended his life with an accumulated US$3.7 million is something extraordinary given the circumstances in which he lived, but this was not Henry’s greatest achievement. “She had many businessmen as clients and rubbed shoulders with important and influential figures whom she urged to lobby against regulations towards sex work that limited her beliefs about bodily autonomy and women’s entrepreneurship,” she explained. she.
Likewise, he assured that Henry’s life served to liquidate certain prejudices. “She broke down cultural stereotypes regarding Black women as brilliant, creative business owners and helped legitimize sex work as a real industry,” she added.
Finally, Hunter regretted that this woman’s story was ignored for so long, even though she is part of the city’s past.
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