Author: Steven

  • Ties to Thomas Jefferson Unravel Family Mystery The Root 2014-01-26 Gayle Jessup White A woman seeks answers to decades-old questions about whether her family is related to the descendants of Thomas Jefferson. ore than 40 years ago, I learned of my family’s ancestral ties to Thomas Jefferson. It was a blood connection impossible to prove,…

  • In the antebellum South, plantation physicians used a new medical device—the spirometer—to show that lung volume and therefore vital capacity were supposedly less in black slaves than in white citizens. At the end of the Civil War, a large study of racial difference employing the spirometer appeared to confirm the finding, which was then applied…

  • Are You My Cousin? The New York Times 2014-01-31 A. J. Jacobs I love my family, but I’m glad I don’t have to buy birthday presents for all my cousins. I’d be bankrupt within a week. My family tree sprawls far and wide. It’s not even a tree, really. More like an Amazonian forest. At…

  • Is ruling in the genes? All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king The Daily Mail London, England, United Kingdom 2012-08-04 Snejana Farberov What do Barack Obama, Thomas Jefferson, George W. Bush and the other past U.S. presidents have in common? Besides holding the coveted title of commander-in-chief, it appears that…

  • Decrying White Peril: Interracial Sex and the Rise of Anticolonial Nationalism in the Gold Coast The American Historical Review Volume 119, Issue 1 (February 2014) pages 78-110 DOI: 10.1093/ahr/119.1.78 Carina E. Ray, Associate Professor of African and Afro- American Studies Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts In the summer and fall of 1919, the African-owned Gold Coast…

  • “Turning Up Their Noses at the Colonel”: Eastern Aristocracy, Western Democracy, and Richard Mentor Johnson Register of the Kentucky Historical Society Volume 111, Number 4, Autumn 2013 pages 525-561 DOI: 10.1353/khs.2014.0022 Miles Smith Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas In February 1849, the Kentucky legislature debated who would represent the state and fill the open…

  • Help Out a New Study Looking at Sharing Preferences for Biracial Children! Tufts University 2014-02-06 Sarah Gaither, M.S. Social Psychology Ph.D. Candidate Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts Do you have a child (age 3-8 years) that is either biracial Black/White or biracial Asian/White and live in the Boston area? We have a new study looking at…

  • ‘Mixed’ [Watson Review] Inside Higher Ed 2014-01-31 Andrea Watson Garrod, Andrew, Christina Gómez, Robert Kilkenny, Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013). 208 pages. Mixed (Cornell University Press) is a collection of 12 autobiographical essays written by college students who identify as multiracial. Unlike most books that focus on…

  • “Mixed” presents engaging and incisive first-person experiences of what it is like to be multiracial in what is supposedly a postracial world. Bringing together twelve essays by college students who identify themselves as multiracial, this book considers what this identity means in a reality that occasionally resembles the post-racial dream of some and at other…

  • 12 Beautiful Portraits Of Black Identity Challenging the “One-Drop” Rule PolicyMic New York, New York 2014-02-06 Amirah Mercer What are you?” they’d ask, head tilted and eyes squinted. “Black,” I’d reply. “No … but like, what else are you? I know it’s not all black.” So went a typical interrogation by my peers as a…