Mother, dear Mother / [by Jennie Elizabeth Franklin].

[Place of publication not identified] : Privately published, 2013.

1 online resource (22 unnumbered pages)

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"Mother, Dear Mother" is a One Act play based on my full-length work entitled "Wonderchild." Both the longer and the shorter work tell the story of the Post-Civil War enslavement of Thomas Greene Wiggins, billed as Blind Tom, the Black musical genius. The boy was born blind, and he suffered from a condition which, at the time, was misunderstood and mis-diagnosed as idiocy. Today, we know it as autism. The writing of the longer work, "Wonderchild," was prompted by a personal request made of me by the late Geneva Handy Southall, who wrote the two definitive works on Blind Tom. "Wonderchild" was presented at the University of Iowa in 1993, and was directed by Tisch Jones, Dr. Southall's daughter, and a professor in the department of theater arts at the University of Iowa. "Mother, Dear Mother" tells the story of Charity Wiggins, the mother of Blind Tom, and her thirty-year legal battle with her former master to gain custody of a son kept from her, in a condition of indentured servitude.

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November 07, 2022