Category: Biography

  • Cedric Dover Wasafiri Volume 27, Issue 2 (2012) pages 56-57 DOI: 10.1080/02690055.2012.662322 Cedric Dover was born in Calcutta in 1904. Dover’s mixed ancestry (English father, Indian mother) and his studies in zoology led to a strong interest in ethnic minorities and their marginalisation. After his studies, he joined the Zoological Survey of India as a…

  • Playing for Malaya: A Eurasian Family and the Pacific War University of Hawai‘i Press (Distributed for the National University of Singapore Press) 2011 208 pages Paper ISBN: 978-9971-69-573-6 Rebecca Kenneison Reggie, according to his niece Wendy, ‘only told what Reggie wanted you to know.’ Reggie was my father. He had honed the technique of talking…

  • The Cayton Legacy: An African American Family Washington State University Press 2002 272 pages 6″ x 9″ Photographs, notes, bibliography, index Paperback ISBN: 978-0-87422-251-7 Richard S. Hobbs The evolution of a remarkable African American family—the Caytons—is a brilliantly told tale set primarily in Seattle and Chicago. The Caytons lived a true American saga, illuminating the…

  • From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family Fordham University Press May 2012 310 pages 6 x 9 25 Black and White Illustrations Hardcover ISBN: 9780823239504 James H. Johnston, Lawyer and Writer Washington, D.C. From Slave Ship to Harvard is the true story of an African American family…

  • Theater; On Hearing Her Sing, Gershwin Made ‘Porgy’ ‘Porgy and Bess’ The New York Times 1998-03-29 Barry Singer In his tragically short life, George Gershwin knew only one Bess, and this bittersweet fact has framed Anne Wiggins Brown’s life. She was that Bess in the original production of Gershwin’s operatic masterwork based on Dorothy and…

  • Jemmy Jock Bird: Marginal Man on the Blackfoot Frontier University of Calgary Press 2004 205 pages 16 b/w illustrations, 1 b/w photo, index Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55238-111-3 John C. Jackson Jemmy Jock Bird, the son of a Cree woman and a mixed-blood trader employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, has become part of the mythology of…

  • Anne Brown, Soprano Who Was Gershwin’s Bess, Is Dead at 96 The New York Times 2009-03-16 Douglas Martin Anne Brown, a penetratingly pure soprano who literally put the Bess in “Porgy and Bess” by inspiring George Gershwin to expand the character’s part in a folk opera that was originally to be called “Porgy,” died Friday…

  • Anne Wiggins Brown (1912-2009) Afrocentric Voices in Classical Music 2012-01-29 Randye Jones Soprano Anne Wiggins Brown was born on August 9, 1912, in Baltimore, Maryland. (This year, rather than 1915, was confirmed by the singer herself.) Her father, Dr. Harry F. Brown, was a prominent physician and grandson of a slave. Her mother, Mary Wiggins…

  • ‘I don’t believe in Negro symphony conductors’ On An Overgrown Path 2011-07-25 John McLaughlin Williams ‘Oh, come in, young man. I’m reading these reviews. They are out of this world. You really have something. But I might as well tell you, right now, I don’t believe in Negro symphony conductors. No, you may play solo…

  • The Third Musketeer The New York Times 2012-09-14   Leo Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Emeritus Harvard University The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal,and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. By Tom Reiss, 432 pp. Crown Publishers. Hardback ISBN: 978-0-307-38246-7. In the 1790s, the son of an aristocratic white father and a black slave…