Category: Articles

  • Roots Entwined by Audrey Dewjee Tangled Roots: Literature and events to celebrate mixed-race people in Yorkshire 2013 Audrey Dewjee Yorkshire-born Audrey Dewjee has been married for over 40 years to a Zanzibari of Indian ancestry. She has been researching British Black and Asian History since the mid-1970s, and is currently a member of Leeds Diasporian…

  • Scotching Three Myths About Mary Seacole British Journal of Healthcare Assistants Volume 7, Issue 10, (October 2013) pages 508-511 Elizabeth Anionwu, Emeritus Professor of Nursing University of West London Mary Seacole has received unprecedented media coverage due to the phenomenal success of the Operation Black Vote petition to keep her included in the national curriculum.…

  • Landmark ’49 Film About Family Passing for White Recalled The Los Angeles Times 1989-07-25 Margaret Lillard The Associated Press KEENE, N.H. — For 12 years, Dr. Albert Johnston and his wife had a secret–a secret they kept from friends, neighbors, even their children. But in 1941, their secret came out–each was part black. The fair-skinned…

  • Thyra Johnston, 91, Symbol Of Racial Distinctions, Dies The New York Times 1995-11-29 Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. (1939-2000) Thyra Johnston, a blue-eyed fair-skinned New Hampshire homemaker who became a symbol of the silliness of racial distinctions when she and her husband announced that they were black, died on Nov. 22 at her home in Honolulu.…

  • Stanford historian re-examines practice of racial ‘passing’ Stanford News The Humanities at Stanford 2013-12-18 Nate Sloan, Doctoral Candidate in Musicology Stanford University In the margins of historical accounts and the dusty corners of family archives, Stanford history Professor Allyson Hobbs uncovers stories long kept hidden: those of African Americans who passed as white, from the…

  • Chesnutt’s Genuine Blacks and Future Americans MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 15, Number 3, Discovery: Research and Interpretation (Autumn, 1988) pages 109-119 SallyAnn H. Ferguson, Professor of English University of North Carolina, Greensboro Scholarship on novelist and short story writer Charles W. Chesnutt stagnates in recent years because his critics have failed to…

  • New York Times and The American Riddle Only-NeverInSweden 2013-09-03 Larry Lundgren Linköping, Sweden The [New York] Times accepted two comments on OpEd article by Charles Blow: “The Most Dangerous Negro.” Here are the two books that I presently cite in comments on this and related articles Prewitt, Kenneth, 2013, What is Your Race-The Census and…

  • Witnessing Charles Chesnutt: The Contexts of “The Dumb Witness” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 38, Issue 4 (December 2013) pages 103-121 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlt045 Benjamin S. Lawson Florida State University The silence and silencing of the character Viney in Charles Chesnutt’s short story, “The Dumb Witness” (c. 1897), artfully addresses the issue of…

  • Americans of multiracial descent recently have become noticeable, respectable, marketable, and, in the case of Barack Obama, presidential. In the last two decades, a growing body of creative and critical work about multiracial lives and issues has materialized. This social and historical development has become an ideological battleground for advocates, politicians, scholars, journalists, and marketers…

  • Arabs, Hispanics seeking better US Census recognition Aljazeera America 2013-12-17 Haya El Nasser, Los Angeles Digital Reporter  Many community organizations hope for a new Middle East and North Africa category in the next Census. When Hassan Jaber, a Lebanese-American, fills out his Census questionnaire, the race question gives him pause. White? No. Black? No. Asian?…