Mariah was sent to Montgomery, AL, where it is verified that she worked in the household of Confederate President Jeff Davis before the South’s capital was relocated to Richmond. 

Unfortunately, Alan Pinkerton, espionage chief for President Abraham Lincoln destroyed all of his records to avoid violent retribution, and – so far – no documentary evidence of espionage by Mariah has emerged.  If it ever does, she will join the ranks of Mary Bowser – the African/Black spy in the Confederate White House in Richmond. Ms. Bowser’s role was preserved and documented because her “spy master” Elizabeth Van Lew wrote about it and Ms. Bowser lectured publicly later. [https://time.com/4350450/mary-richards-bowser/]

Nonetheless, the last thing we would have expected is that Mariah would have given a deposition about the “Franklin Riot” of 1867 – an armed and deadly confrontation between Conservatives/ex-Confederates and the Union League/Loyal League. She pinpointed which side (the Conservatives) fired first. Or, that she would be a key supporting character in a New York Times best-seller, Widow of the South, which focused on her owner, Carrie McGavock. We became friendly with the author Robert Hicks. After meeting him, other preservationists and historians in Franklin, we decided to write a novel to tell the story of Mariah’s forebears, her family and her descendants from the perspective of enslaved and free Africans/Blacks and their Native American and Euro-American allies.

And, so, CLANDESTINE: The Times and Secret Life of Mariah Otey Reddick has come to life as a self-published eBook in pdf format after five years of focused research and writing, interrupted by a term as an Alumni Trustee (2014-17) on the Board of our Alma Mater, Howard University in Washington, DC.

We – my wife and I – initially planned to tell a simple family story of an enslaved and emancipated twice-widowed mid-wife (to the “finest families”), seamstress, spy and freedom-fighter. It evolved into a saga of resistance and resilience covering historical events from 1739 and continuing through the years following the First World War, and including lookbacks from a Spanish character to his family’s experiences in Moorish Andalusia on the Iberian Peninsula.

CLANDESTINE draws on universal themes such as the unquenchable human thirst for freedom, while uplifting African culture and highlighting what are often-marginalized perspectives as well as little-known historical events.

CLANDESTINE relates an exciting, surprising and cascading tale of: resistance & espionage, freedom & terror, loyalty & betrayal, blackmail & death, guilt & dignity, valiant freedom fighters & cruel slavers. Captured within its 350 plus pages are grief & joy, faith & love, sacrifice & accomplishment, crime & impunity, vengeance & justice, battlefield bravery & principled desertion, treachery & unexpected allies, painful choices & flagrant hypocrisy, depravity & innocence as well as spirituality and devotion.

These days, on the site of my granddad’s home on Columbia Avenue, a proud Franklin, TN displays mural panels depicting Mariah, her husband Bolen and her last child, my granddad John W. Reddick, his wife and my mother Thelma as a child. Two housing developments and a street in Franklin are named after John W. Reddick (1880-1941), who rose to prominence as a community and state-wide leader and a proponent of education for “Negro” children. We strive to keep the legacy alive.