Mixed Race Studies

The black celebrity from Hollywood’s Golden Age who revealed the complexities of passing for white

Timeline
2018-01-02

Nina Renata Aron, Senior Editor

Fredi Washington in a dressing room in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, circa 1940. (Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images)

Fredi Washington negotiated bigotry and made her way in the movies

When African American actress Fredi Washington played a black girl passing for white in the 1934 film Imitation of Life, she was accused by critics of denying her own heritage. In fact, Washington never hid her roots, and went on to become an activist for African Americans in the performing arts. As she later told Hue magazine, “I’m honest and…you don’t have to be white to be good.”

The young, black starlet posed a challenge for a Hollywood used to seeing in black and white. Washington was so light-skinned that she reportedly had to wear makeup to play black characters. According to Washington’s friend Jean-Claude Baker, a restaurateur and author, many who saw her thought she was white and she was able to frequent whites-only establishments all her life without problems. “She did pass for white when she was traveling in the South with Duke Ellington,” Baker is quoted as saying in Washington’s New York Times 1994 obituary. “They could not go into ice-cream parlors, so she would go in and buy the ice cream, then go outside and give it to Ellington and the band. Whites screamed at her, ‘Nigger lover!’”…

Read the entire article here.

Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical

Basic Books
2017-12-05
480 pages
6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
Hardcover ISBN 13: 9780201510355
eBook ISBN 13: 9780201626636

Jacqueline Jones, Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History
University of Texas, Austin

From a prize-winning historian, a new portrait of an extraordinary activist and the turbulent age in which she lived

Goddess of Anarchy recounts the formidable life of the militant writer, orator, and agitator Lucy Parsons. Born to an enslaved woman in Virginia in 1851 and raised in Texas-where she met her husband, the Haymarket “martyr” Albert Parsons-Lucy was a fearless advocate of First Amendment rights, a champion of the working classes, and one of the most prominent figures of African descent of her era. And yet, her life was riddled with contradictions-she advocated violence without apology, concocted a Hispanic-Indian identity for herself, and ignored the plight of African Americans.

Drawing on a wealth of new sources, Jacqueline Jones presents not only the exceptional life of the famous American-born anarchist but also an authoritative account of her times-from slavery through the Great Depression.

Obama: An Intimate Portrait: The Historic Presidency in Photographs

Little, Brown and Company
2017-11-07
352 pages
Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780316512572

Pete Souza

Foreword by: Barack Obama

Relive the extraordinary Presidency of Barack Obama through White House photographer Pete Souza’s behind-the-scenes images and stories in this #1 New York Times bestseller–with a foreword from the President himself.

During Barack Obama’s two terms, Pete Souza was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else–and he photographed them all. Souza captured nearly two million photographs of President Obama, in moments highly classified and disarmingly candid.

Obama: An Intimate Portrait reproduces more than 300 of Souza’s most iconic photographs with fine-art print quality in an oversize collectible format. Together they document the most consequential hours of the Presidency–including the historic image of President Obama and his advisors in the Situation Room during the bin Laden mission–alongside unguarded moments with the President’s family, his encounters with children, interactions with world leaders and cultural figures, and more.

Souza’s photographs, with the behind-the-scenes captions and stories that accompany them, communicate the pace and power of our nation’s highest office. They also reveal the spirit of the extraordinary man who became our President. We see President Obama lead our nation through monumental challenges, comfort us in calamity and loss, share in hard-won victories, and set a singular example to “be kind and be useful,” as he would instruct his daughters.

This book puts you in the White House with President Obama, and will be a treasured record of a landmark era in American history.

Dream Big Dreams: Photographs from Barack Obama’s Inspiring and Historic Presidency (Young Readers)

Little, Brown and Company Young Readers (an imprint of Hachette Book Group)
2017-11-21
96 pages
Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780316514392
E-Book: ISBN-13: 9780316514118

Pete Souza

From former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza comes a book for young readers that highlights Barack Obama’s historic presidency and the qualities and actions that make him so beloved.

Pete Souza served as Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama’s full two terms. He was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else – and he photographed them all, capturing scenes both classified and candid. Throughout his historic presidency, Obama engaged with young people as often as he could, encouraging them to be their best and do their best and to always “dream big dreams.” In this timeless and timely keepsake volume that features over seventy-five full-color photographs, Souza shows the qualities of President Obama that make him both a great leader and an extraordinary man. With behind-the-scenes anecdotes of some iconic photos alongside photos with his family, colleagues, and other world leaders, Souza tells the story of a president who made history and still made time to engage with even the youngest citizens of the country he served. By the author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait, the definitive visual biography of Barack Obama’s presidency, Dream Big Dreams was created especially for young readers and not only provides a beautiful portrait of a president but shows the true spirit of the man.

The Marriage Battle: A Family Tradition, A Memoir by Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Mill City Press
2017-12-05
222 pages
5.25″ x 8″
Softcover ISBN 13: 9781545613429
ePub ISBN 13: 9781545616307
MOBI ISBN 13: 9781545616307

Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Golddigger, nigger lover… Those are some of the insults hurled at Iris in 1961 by the military brass when they grilled her about the relationship with Sue’s father. And when her dad Ray, a Black GI stationed in England, asked his superiors for permission to marry Sue’s mum, a white single mom from Liverpool, they asked him why he wanted to marry a whore with a bastard child. But they remained steadfast and married even though their interracial union wouldn’t be fully recognized until 1967 when Richard and Mildred Loving would prevail and anti-miscegenation laws were abolished. Like the Lovings, her parents, Iris and Ray Green fought the courts and culture to stay together and raise a family.

Their story of love and perseverance became Sue’s story and provided the inspiration for this book. She is an out and proud lesbian and it is her parent’s battle to marry and have their interracial union recognized by the law that has led Sue to her own moment to take a stand for love. She too fought for the right to marry her wife Robin. And almost 50 years to the day of the Loving decision, the Defense of Marriage Act was repealed and same sex marriages were legal.

This book is a memoir and a love and a life story about Sue’s life with Robin and her parents’ life. It spans decades from the late 1950s when our country was rocked by civil unrest, to the present nearly 60 years later. It is a story of growing up biracial and dealing with racism and living as an outsider both at home and during her family’s military postings abroad. It reveals the parallel lives of Sue and her parents who experienced traumatic events that impacted their early days and and later years, yet fought for the same shared goal. Despite the hurdles, they held on to the belief that they deserved to find someone to love, and marry that person no matter what their color or gender.

And ultimately it’s about four people falling in love with someone society said you shouldn’t love, breaking the marriage laws at the time, and being willing to deal with the consequences of those decisions. It is a love story – and is as simple, yet complicated as that.

Being Black: Still a multi-front struggle

DW
2017-04-07

Theodor Wonja Michael

A particular excerpt of the DW documentary “Afro.Germany” went viral: the touching testimony of one of the oldest Afro-Germans born in Berlin. Here’s what can be learned from social media users’ hundreds of reactions.

“I am an African – I didn’t even know Cameroon and Togo were German colonies,” said one social media user, reacting to an online video clip about the life and times of Theodor Wonja Michael, one of Germany’s oldest contemporary witnesses.

The clip is an excerpt from “Afro.Germany,” a documentary project by Deutsche Welle, which aims to chronicle the diversity of Black experiences in Germany and challenge the historical amnesia surrounding Germany’s colonial past.

The video narrates Michael’s extraordinary experiences as a Black person in Germany.

Born in Berlin in 1925, Michael was forced to act in “human zoos” during his childhood. He survived the Nazi era and later became an actor and author…

…A further challenge: fluid identities

However, subsequent analysis by researchers such as E. P. Johnson, has drawn attention to the more troubling implications of Black identity politics.

Black pride can inadvertently promote the problematic notion of Black authenticity – that is to say, it can construct an image of the the “real Blacks” and the “real” Black experience, to which the individuals must conform and relate. This line of thinking can hinder efforts geared towards separating identity from race.

For example, one commentator insisted on referring to Michael as “mixed-race” and denounced the acceptance of “trans-racial crap.”

Race does not define us, but it does influence our experience of the world. Needless to say, “Black” includes a spectrum of peoples whose experience of race varies depending on the interaction of other factors, such as class, culture, gender, nationality, etc. For many people, race is not a black and white issue, but a multi-front struggle for inclusion in their “own” communities.

“My mother was French, my father was American […] Being light skinned, I fought blacks because I wasn’t dark enough. I fought whites because I was colored. Fought Spanish, Puerto Ricans because they said I was a ‘wanna be’ and fake,” said one commentator…

Read the entire article here.

WSW: Crispus Attucks And A “Blank Slate” In History

WestSouthwest
WMUK 102.1 FM
Information + Inspiration for Southwest Michigan from Western Michigan University

Gordon Evans, Host

First Marty of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory
Credit Oxford University Press

Western Michigan University History Professor Mitch Kachun says his book is about Crispus Attucks, one of the men, killed at the Boston Massacre in 1770. But he says First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory also raises questions about who’s included in history, and who is ignored.

Attucks himself was ignored for long periods of American history. Kachun says while the Boston Massacre was remembered in the 1770’s into the 1780’s, those killed were rarely mentioned by name. But Kachun says around the time of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, more attention was paid to the role of the working class in the American Revolution. Then as the anti-slavery movement became more active, the story of the mixed-race man killed in 1770 was told more often. By the end of the 1840’s and in the 1850’s, Kachun says Attucks was often referred to as a figure in the Revolution.

If Attucks had not been mixed race, Kachun says his name may not have come so much over time. He says that very few people can name any of the others killed at the Boston Massacre. Kachun says Attucks was identified as mixed-race or “mulatto,” but the initial newspaper accounts and the coroner’s report identified him as “Michael Johnson.” Kachun says that had led to theories that Crispus Attucks was hiding his identity because he had escaped slavery in 1750. But Kachun says there is no evidence to support that claim…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the interview (00:29:27) here.

Britain’s black queen: Will Meghan Markle really be the first mixed-race royal?

The Washington Post
2017-11-17

DeNeen L. Brown, Feature Writer

A portrait of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, and American actress Meghan Markle, who is engaged to Prince Harry. (Print Collector/Getty Images and Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)

When Britain’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle announced their engagement Monday, Twitter erupted with the news that the newest princess in the royal family would be biracial.

“We got us a Black princess ya’ll,” GirlTyler exulted. “Shout out to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Their wedding will be my Super Bowl.”

We got us a Black princess ya’ll. You really can’t tell me a damn thing for the rest of the day because it won’t matter. Shout out to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Their wedding will be my Super Bowl. pic.twitter.com/WmBnGm5AuZ

— GirlTyler (@sheistyler) November 27, 2017

But Markle, whose mother is black and whose father is white, may not be the first mixed-race royal.

Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III who bore the king 15 children, was of African descent…

Read the entire article here.

First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory

Oxford University Press
2017-07-19
328 pages
22 hts
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9780199731619

Mitch Kachun, Professor of History
Western Michigan University

• Most thorough study of what is known about the life of Crispus Attucks.
• First extended analysis of the role of Attucks in American history and memory.
• Figure has been referenced constantly in popular culture throughout the centuries, inc. current series “Luke Cage.”

First Martyr of Liberty explores how Crispus Attucks’s death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance in African Americans’ struggle to incorporate their experiences and heroes into the mainstream of the American historical narrative. While the other victims of the Massacre have been largely ignored, Attucks is widely celebrated as the first to die in the cause of freedom during the era of the American Revolution. He became a symbolic embodiment of black patriotism and citizenship.

This book traces Attucks’s career through both history and myth to understand how his public memory has been constructed through commemorations and monuments; institutions and organizations bearing his name; juvenile biographies; works of poetry, drama, and visual arts; popular and academic histories; and school textbooks. There will likely never be a definitive biography of Crispus Attucks since so little evidence exists about the man’s actual life. While what can and cannot be known about Attucks is addressed here, the focus is on how he has been remembered–variously as either a hero or a villain–and why at times he has been forgotten by different groups and individuals from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Who Was This Man?
• Chapter 2: The Dustbin of History: Crispus Attucks and American Amnesia, 1770s-1840s
• Chapter 3: First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks and the Struggle for Citizenship in the Civil War Era
• Chapter 4: Crispus Attucks Meets Jim Crow: The Segregation of American Memory, 1870s-1910s
• Chapter 5: Crispus Attucks Meets the New Negro: Black History and Black Heroes between the World Wars
• Chapter 6: Crispus Attucks Meets Dorie Miller: Black Patriotism and Activism in the World War II Era
• Chapter 7: Crispus Attucks and the Black Freedom Struggle, 1950s-1970s
• Chapter 8: Crispus Attucks from the Bicentennial to the Culture Wars, 1970s-1990s
• Chapter 9: Crispus Attucks in Twenty-First Century America
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index

My mother spent her life passing as white. Discovering her secret changed my view of race — and myself.

The Washington Post
2017-11-20

Gail Lukasik

The author’s mother, Alvera Fredric, was born into a black family in New Orleans but spent her life passing as white. (Family photo)

I’d never seen my mother so afraid.

“Promise me,” she pleaded, “you won’t tell anyone until after I die. How will I hold my head up with my friends?”

For two years, I’d waited for the right moment to confront my mother with the shocking discovery I made in 1995 while scrolling through the 1900 Louisiana census records. In the records, my mother’s father, Azemar Frederic of New Orleans, and his entire family were designated black.

The discovery had left me reeling, confused and in need of answers. My sense of white identity had been shattered.

My mother’s visit to my home in Illinois seemed like the right moment. This was not a conversation I wanted to have on the phone.

But my mother’s fearful plea for secrecy only added to my confusion about my racial identity. As did her birth certificate that I obtained from the state of Louisiana, which listed her race as “col” (colored), and a 1940 Louisiana census record, which listed my mother, Alvera Frederic, as Neg/Negro, working in a tea shop in New Orleans. Four years later, she moved north and married my white father…

Read the entire article here.