In 1914, bounty hunters scoured the Virginia countryside looking for Black children to steal and transform into freak show acts for the traveling Ringling Bros. (also known as Barnum and Bailey’s) circus show.
Snatching albino brothers George (age 6) and Willie (age 9) Muse from the Truevine, Virginia field their family sharecropped, the “Greatest Show On Earth” had no idea the hell a Black mother would raise for her sons’ safe return.
For 13 years, Harriett Muse searched… until she found them.
Tragically, an elaborate scheme to keep George and Willie in captivity was well underway.
The adult Muse brothers were dehumanized with outlandish costuming, prevented from learning how to read or write, and fed lies by their captors that their mother had died.
Grief, illiteracy, and encroaching blindness subdued the brothers temporarily. But no way would their mother give up her fight.
When Harriett learned the circus was coming to nearby Roanoke, she disrupted their act, risking her own life confronting KKK-affiliated policemen to retrieve her long lost children.
Even as circus executives threatened legal retaliation, Harriett secured the freedom and unpaid compensation George and Willie deserved.
Though their subsequent settlement was a pain to enforce, Harriett’s determination in the face of heartbreakingly-common exploitation provided rare justice for two men who circus owners paraded around the world as “proof” that Black people were subhuman.