1893-1968
ELY
GREEN
Introducing a digital variorum of the autobiography of Ely Green, a biracial man who was born in 1893 and came of age in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Who was Ely Green?
Ely Green, born in 1893, was the son of a Black domestic servant, Lena Green. Her pregnancy resulted from abuse she suffered while working for a white household as a teenager.
His white father, Edward Wicks, was understood to be one of the sons of the household and a law student at the time. With a father who never acknowledged his parentage and a mother who died when he was only eight years old, Green grew up fostered by his mother’s friend, whom he affectionately called “Mama Mat,” and was often treated as an unofficial ward of the University of the South by Sewanee’s white elite.
His autobiography tells the complicated story of growing up biracial on the University domain at the turn of the twentieth century, where racial delineations forced him along a path he constantly questioned and subverted throughout as he came of age.
“My father was a white man. My mother was so called a negress. So I was looked on as a half white bastard and so called that by almost every one that knew me: In this town many of the better class of white people, often taken Negro boys-girl into their homes to train them to be effecient help. This is how my mother became a victim of this misfortune by producing me . . .”
- Ely Green
The Ely Digital Variorum compares Green’s handwritten words with the manuscript’s published derivatives.
Explore the ProjectWhat is a digital variorum?
A digital transcription displayed alongside printed variations of a written work.
The EGDV exemplifies the digital humanities practice of using web tools to compare different editions of a written work. The foundational text is typically, as is the case with EGDV, a manuscript. The goal is to explore the ways in which a manuscript has been treated and altered through the editing process, particularly over time and across multiple editions. A three-panel viewing tool, called EditionCrafter, allows users of this particular variorum to compare Green’s handwritten manuscript and its transcription to two different printed editions.
