The Secrets of Mary Bowser

HELLO, MY POTATOES!!! I'm here to summarize a week's worth of reading on the book, The Secrets of Mary Bowser. It's a book by Lois Leveen and a book that I recommend. Anyways I hope you all enjoy my summarization and to check out my other blogs as well.

             The story starts off with an African slave girl named Mary El. When I learned about the main character, I knew right away this was about how the slaves were treated and how Mary El was the
example. But something did tell me she was going to make a difference. A small difference, but a
difference. Anyways, Mary El has a mother and a father and they all lived in Richmond, Virginia.
Mary El and her mother worked for a generous family called the Van Lews, so they get a little more
freedom than the other slaves in Virginia. Even so, the mother and father want Mary El to move up to Philadelphia for a better education, and to live with a Quaker family. I remember from my previous education in Philadelphia that Quakers were families that believed the Negroes were the same as any other person. I liked those kinds of people, the kind of people that believed all were equal.

Anyways, Mary El goes to Philadelphia and makes friends/ gets an education. She particularly hangs out with a girl named Hattie. She has to be a slave in order to get money for her family, specifically her little brother. Mary El is clueless, so she shrugs it off and goes to the prayer house. When she sits down, she is asked by a white lady to go sit on that bench in the back. I had one idea on what was about to go down, so I kept reading. A 60-year-old African American came to sit down next to Mary El. She asked the man why he was sitting here when he could sitting next to the other whites. The man replied, saying that the negroes sat back here. This caused me to throw the book across the room and scream 'I KNEW IT'! I decided after I screamed that I didn't want to read this until the next day. So I closed the book and went to bed.