Category: Biography

  • Re-Visioning Wildfire: Historical Interpretations of the Life and Art of Edmonia Lewis Southeastern Oklahoma University Native American Symposium 2005-Proceedings of the Sixth Native American Symposium pages 31-39 Julieanna Frost Concordia University As a feminist historian, one of my major goals is to reclaim the histories of women and to broadcast the diversity of the female…

  • Virgil Westdale: Farm Boy, Pilot, Soldier, Inventor, Author, and Gentleman Japanese American National Museum Stories 2010-09-09 Esther Newman Virgil Westdale’s exceptional life story might never have been published had he not attended a Halloween dance. Unsure of what to wear, the World War II veteran donned his Army uniform of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team,…

  • The Rumpus Interview with Joe Mozingo The Rumpus 2013-03-04 Peter Orner I recently finished a powerful book about a journey to find the origin of a name. It’s called the The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo. The book details Mozingo’s search for the…

  • The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family Free Press (an Imprint of Simon & Schuster) October 2012 320 pages Hardcover ISBN: 9781451627480 eBook ISBN: 9781451627619 Joe Mozingo “My dad’s family was a mystery,” writes prize-winning journalist Joe Mozingo. Growing up, he knew that his mother’s ancestors were…

  • Bewildered in Boston HiLobrow 2011-11-12 Joshua Glenn, Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief Fanny Howe isn’t part of the local literary canon. But her seven novels about interracial love and utopian dreaming offer a rich social history of Boston in the 1960s and ’70s. [This essay first appeared in The Boston Globe’s IDEAS section, on March 7, 2004.]…

  • The Barber of Natchez National Park Service Natchez: National Historical Park, Mississippi 2012-07-19 Timothy Van Cleave, Park Ranger Natchez National Historical Park The Life of William Johnson Known as the “barber” of Natchez, William Johnson began his life as a slave. His freedom at age eleven followed that of his mother Amy and his sister…

  • This article examines Henry Ossawa Tanner’s complex sense of his own racial identity. Tanner’s conflict was born of the fact that in his personal adult life he walked a fragile line between his whiteness and his blackness; in France, he systematically worked to remove race from the equation of his life. The author also identifies…

  • Rutgers Student, a German ‘Brown Baby,’ Helps Others Search for their Identities and Creates Community Focus: News for and about Rutgers faculty, students, and staff Rutgers University 2012-05-01 Carrie Stetler She grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey, as Wanda Lynn Haymon, the only child of an African-American mother and father who made her feel special…

  • The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo Bedford/St. Martin’s 2013 208 pages Paper ISBN-10: 0-312-60762-8; ISBN-13: 978-0-312-60762-3 George Appo (1856-1930) Edited with an Introduction by: Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Professor of History Loyola University, Chicago Through the colorful autobiography of pickpocket and con man George Appo, Timothy Gilfoyle brings to…

  • In George Appo’s world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year.