He smeared soot across his face and turned Black pain into white applause. His ‘Jim Crow’ wasn’t a man, it was a mirror reflecting everything white America wanted to believe that black people were less. 

This true short story is about a 13-year-old enslaved girl named Harriet, whose story is nearly lost in history. It is rarely spoken of, but we will give her a voice.

At just 14 years old, Celia was purchased by Robert Newsom, a Missouri slave owner who subjected her to years of relentless sexual violence. As she endured repeated assaults, Celia’s body was not her own until one fateful night in 1855, when she took a stand and killed her.