Mixed Race Studies

Heredity and Racial Science for Elementary and Secondary Schools (Erblehre und Rassenkunde für die Grund- und Hauptschule) 2nd edition

Verlag Konkordia
Bühl-Baden, Germany
1937

Karl Bareth, Author

Alfred Vogel, Author

Source: German Propaganda Archive, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Archived and Translated by:

Randall Bytwerk, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Background: This is a teacher’s guide to racial instruction, covering the 4th through the 8th grades. I provide a translation of sections that strike me as particularly interesting. Bareth was an experienced teacher, and Vogel’s title is Rektor. Vogel also produced a set of posters to be used in classroom instruction. Published in 1937, before the alliance with Japan, there is some material on the “Yellow Peril.” Such material disappeared later.

…b) Race mixing among humans.

We have already spoken about one racial mixing. That had to do with the racial development of the German people. May we also speak of it as bastardization? If we look into the face of the German people, peering deeply into its spiritual life, we are absolutely convinced that the joining of these six races into one whole people was not a bastardization. Their genetic traits joined in a wonderful and harmonious way to form the German people, from which our German culture sprang.

We speak of bastardization in the case of a mixed race (Mischlinge) that develops from fundamentally different races or racial mixtures, as, for example, one between Europeans and Negroes, Europeans and Asians, Europeans and Indians, Europeans and Jews, etc. Such mixed race individuals carry the contradictory trains of both races, resulting in a confusion. Bastards are unhappy people. A bastard of European and Negroid decent has some of the characteristics of the white race, and some characteristics of the black race. He unsuited both for the jungles and hot sun of the south, but also for the north. Two souls live and compete within the breast of the bastard. He never finds peace and a harmonious, balanced life. The hard laws of blood force him to live a life of racial confusion and fragmentation…

Read the entire guide here.

Mary Seacole: The Black Woman Who Invented Modern Nursing

Basic Books
2004-11-19
288 pages
5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9780786714148; ISBN-10: 078671414X

Jane Robinson

She was a black woman, and she flouted convention. In an age that put ladies in the parlor and preferred them to be seen and not heard, she was nursing the British wounded, not in hospital wards with Florence Nightingale but on the Crimean battlefields—and off them, she was running a restaurant and hotel. She purveyed homemade pickles in England; she mined for gold in Panama. For unabashed individuality, Mary Jane Grant Seacole knew no peer. Yet Punch, the Times, the Illustrated London News all ardently touted her, and Queen Victoria herself entertained her. Mary Seacole—childless widow of Horatio Nelson’s godson and “good ole Mother Seacole” to the soldiers at Sebastopol—was Britain’s first black heroine, and this robust, engaging biography by social historian Jane Robinson shows why. In a narrative driven by colorful adventure, Robinson charts Seacole’s amazing odyssey from her native Kingston, Jamaica, to her adopted London, via Panama, where she lent her doctoring and nursing skills to catastrophic outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever, and the Crimea, where she founded the famous British Hotel. Seacole makes numerous other eventful stops along the way, and everywhere, even in the face of disappointment, disaster, and loss, her indomitable spirit prevails.

Who Was the 1st Black Duke?

The Root
2013-05-13

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of History
Harvard University

Porträt des Alessandro de Medici by Pontormo, 1534-1535

100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: Meet the scion of a legendary Italian dynasty.

Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage.

I discovered the answer to the question above while visiting the Walker Art Museum’s exhibition “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” now at Princeton University. I was astonished when I encountered Bronzino’s “Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici,” a mulatto by the sight of him who, the exhibit claimed, also happened to be a member of one of the most powerful families in history and the first Duke of Florence almost 500 years ago! 

Fascinated, I hurried home to see if Joel A. Rogers had included him in his various compilations of famous black people, many of whom were mixed race, liked this man appeared to be. Sure enough, Rogers listed him both in his 100 Amazing Facts and in Volume II of his The World’s Great Men of Color. His conclusion startled me: “That Alessandro was a tyrant there is no doubt whatever,” a remarkably frank assessment from Rogers, who had a tendency to romanticize the achievements of just about every person of even the proverbial “one drop” whom he discovered hidden in the shadows of world history. I wanted to know more about this man. Here are the highlights of what I learned.

A Pivotal Potentate

Like the first black president of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, and our first black president, Barack Obama, Alessandro de’ Medici (1511-1537)—the first black head of state in the history of the modern Western world—was a mulatto. He was the son of an African slave and one of two Medici males, either a duke or a future pope. With the latter’s blessing, Alessandro served as duke himself—of Florence—from the age of 19 to his assassination at age 26 at the hands of his cousin. The reason the cousin gave: Alessandro was a tyrant out of step with his times, a military ruler in a republican age…

Read the entire article here.

The Place in Between: An Interview with Esi Edugyan

Callaloo
Volume 36, Number 1, Winter 2013
pages 46-51
DOI: 10.1353/cal.2013.0070

Maaza Mengiste

Esi Edugyan’s 2011 Man Booker Prize finalist, Half-Blood Blues, opens with the lines, “Chip told us not to go out. Said, don’t you boys tempt the devil.” It is 1940 in Nazi-occupied Paris and the “boys” include Afro-German, Jewish, and African-American members of a jazz band who have recently fled an increasingly dangerous Berlin. They are living under a terrifying regime, trapped as much by the color of their skin as the curfews and constant presence of the Gestapo. Told from the perspective of Sid, an African-American bassist who left pre-civil rights era Baltimore to escape racial segregation, it is Hiero, the incomparably gifted trumpeter player, who holds the band together. But Half-Blood Blues is more than a book about music. Edugyan illuminates one of the forgotten victims of Nazi Germany’s ruthless quest for a racially “pure” state: the “Rhineland Bastards,” mixed-race Germans whose stories were lost when they went into hiding, fled, or disappeared into concentration camps. Hiero is one of those “mischlings,” and through him, we begin to understand how encompassing a denied history can be. But perhaps more than anything, this is a story about friendship, betrayal, loyalty, and the possibility of redemption through music. To read Half-Blood Blues is to hear jazz and the ache of regret through prose. Garnering nominations and awards internationally, the book has kept Edugyan on a busy, hectic schedule. It was my honor to have the chance to catch her in a quiet moment to talk about her book.

Mengiste:

I want to just jump right in and talk a little bit about the book’s setting and its characters. Part of the story takes place in 1940 Paris and Nazi Germany. What was your motivation for writing about this moment in history? What got you really interested in it, and these characters?

Edugyan:

I think I’ve always had a fascination with that period of history. It was such an extreme time in terms of what was happening everywhere, but especially in Europe, in those initial months when the Third Reich came to power. It was very fascinating for me. I had been living in Germany for about a year and a half, over two separate periods. The first time I was there for about thirteen months, learning German and really trying to immerse myself in the culture. And being a black woman living in Southern Germany, I started to wonder about the history of black people in Europe in general, but specifically in Germany. And so I did some research and discovered the story about the Rhineland Bastards—or the so-called “Rhineland Bastards.” That’s how I came to focus on this period that I had done quite a bit of reading on over my lifetime. It was interesting to me.

Mengiste:

When you were researching these Rhineland Bastards, these children born to black soldiers and German mothers in the period following WWI, what guided your decision to make your characters musicians?

Edugyan:

I have a very strong interest in music and grew up with a very strong interest in music even though I was never able to play the instruments very well. So, I’d been working on a project about a different kind of musician, a classical musician. And when I was in Germany, I started putting that aside and turning my sights to jazz musicians. And this was, in large part, because I quite love jazz. I’m not a huge expert on it, I’ll admit that, but what I’ve heard I really like. But also because I knew that Germany had gone through a big jazz age in the twenties, you know, there was a big avant-garde time after the First World War. So then you start to think about “well, what would happen to all of those musicians once the Third Reich took power?” And, you know, it was something that I certainly didn’t know anything about, so I just had to do…

A Black Nurse, a German Soldier and an Unlikely WWII Romance

The New York Times
2013-05-14

Alexis Clark

The nurse and the soldier may never have met – and eventually married – had it not been for the American government’s mistreatment of black women during World War II.

Elinor Elizabeth Powell was an African-American military nurse. Frederick Albert was a German prisoner of war. Their paths crossed in Arizona in 1944. It was a time when the Army was resisting enlisting black nurses and the relatively small number allowed entry tended to be assigned to the least desirable duties.

“They decided they were going to use African-Americans but in very small numbers and in segregated locations,” said Charissa Threat, a history professor at Northeastern University who teaches race and gender studies.

Ms. Powell was born in 1921 in Milton, Mass., and in, 1944, after completing basic training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., she was sent, as some other black nurses were, to tend to German prisoners of war in Florence, Ariz.

“I know the story of how they met,” said Chris Albert, 59, the youngest son of Elinor and Frederick Albert. “It was in the officers’ mess hall, and my father was working in the kitchen. He kind of boldly made his way straight for my mother and said: ‘You should know my name. I’m the man who’s going to marry you.’”

Frederick Karl Albert was born in 1925 in Oppeln, Germany. “He volunteered for the paratroops to impress his father, who served in WWI,” Mr. Albert said. “His father was an engineer and not really interested in his children. My dad ended up getting captured in Italy.”…

…The American military officially ended segregation after WWII, but for the Alberts, the issue of race would resurface throughout their lives. Their unlikely romance resulted in Stephen’s birth in December 1946. After Frederick was able to return to the United States, he and Elinor married on June 26, 1947, in Manhattan.

“I would say the first 10 years for my parents were a struggle to find some kind of economic security and a safe haven for an interracial family,” said Chris Albert, who plays the trumpet with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

“They moved to Boston and my father worked several jobs,’’ he said. “At some point, he decided it was best if they moved to Göttingen, Germany, where his parents lived. He could work for his father’s cement manufacturing business.”

But Kristina Brandner, 70, a niece of Frederick Albert, said life in Germany was difficult. “Göttingen is a small town,’’ she said. “My grandmother never had contact with black people so it was strange and uncomfortable for her with Elinor. Kids used to ask me how come there was a black woman living with us, and why is your cousin another color. Sometimes, I saw Elinor in the kitchen crying.”

In less than two years, Frederick, Elinor, Stephen and Chris, who was an infant, returned to the United States….

Read the entire article here.

Also by Mail

Edition Assemblage: Begleiterscheinungen emanzipatorischer Theorie und Praxis
2013-02-20
96 pages
Paperback, 142×205 mm
ISBN 978-3-942885-38-6
Series: Witnessed Edition 2

Olumide Popoola

Also by Mail is a modern family comedy-drama that follows the experiences of Nigerian German siblings Funke and Wale who fly to Nigeria to bury their suddenly deceased father. Their upbringing clashes with their uncle’s expectations and initial misunderstandings soon come to an éclat. When Wale returns to Germany, frustrated, he is bitterly reminded of how little his father acknowledged and prepared them for racist encounters there.

Loss and racism, sibling rivalry and cross-cultural etiquette, the play incorporates and subverses it’s urban, neo-African elements of story-telling to give a contemporary picture of a family that struggles not only with the legacy of its patriarch but with being racialized within the German context as well. Where does each stand in a circle of relations and needs? Where does each want to end up? And who is willing to help? It takes an inside-outside job to lighten the mood and the surprise startles them all.

Brown Babies Germany’s Forgotten Children – Henriette Cain

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
2013-01-17

Bernice Bennett, Host

Are you searching for your family?  Are you German, Brown and want to learn more about your American or German heritage?

Join Henriette Cain Genealogist, Search Consultant and Secretary of the Black German Cultural Society (BGCS), Inc.  Mrs. Cain – a brown baby adoptee successfully found all members of her birth family. She is now helping others with their searches through her company S.U.N. Public Records Research. She offers family history research and strives to reunite families and friends. She is prominently featured in the documentary – “Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder“.

Mrs. Cain is also a Founding Member, co-founder and former Vice President of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical  Society of the Northen Illinois Southern Wisconsin Chapter; a member of the Noxubee County (MS) Historical Society, and a former volunteer Librarian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Library.

Play in your default player here.

Exclusive: Sonia Rolland talks activism, new film

Euromight: Your Guide to Afro-Europe
2013-04-15

Epée Hervé Dingong

Sonia Rolland, (Miss France 2000), is an actress and model who has been outspoken about racial issues in the film and fashion industries, and in the media. In this exclusive interview she talks about her work, politics and what it means to be “black” in France.

After being Miss France how did you become a successful actress?

It took a lot of work because I had to convince the acting community that a beauty queen could be an actress. I always wanted to act, but becoming Miss France wasn’t the right way to pursue that goal. When you’ve been Miss France you have always that label. Determination and willingness were the keys and today people talk about me as an actress…

…Do you think you would have more roles in if you were not black or a woman?

It’s not clear-cut when you are mixed race because they don’t know where to put you. If I was totally black I would be put in that category, but I’m mixed, so that’s another thing for them to deal with. However, I was Miss France. Though advantages can mean more difficulties, but that doesn’t stop me. It makes me stronger. I’ve done many projects including Desordres, (her new film) and this summer I’ll be in Michigan shooting a movie called “Radio Days” where I play a French Senegalese woman, then I’ll appear in French filmmaker Tavernier’s movie Quai D’Orsay. I also do the Mixa commercial on TV, which gives me permanent visibility…

Read the entire interview here.

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Random House
2012-09-18
432 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-307-38246-7

Tom Reiss

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo—a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave—who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.

Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son. 

Table of Contents

• prologue, part 1 • February 26, 1806
• prologue, part 2 • January 25, 2007
• book one
  • chapter 1 • The Sugar Factory
  • chapter 2 • The Black Code
  • chapter 3 • Norman Conquest
  • chapter 4 • “No One Is a Slave in France”
  • chapter 5 • Americans in Paris
  • chapter 6 • Black Count in the City of Light
  • chapter 7 • A Queen’s Dragoon
• book two
  • chapter 8 • Summers of Revolution
  • chapter 9 • “Regeneration by Blood”
  • chapter 10 • “The Black Heart Also Beats for Liberty”
  • chapter 11 • “Mr. Humanity”
  • chapter 12 • The Battle for the Top of the World
  • chapter 13 • The Bottom of the Revolution
  • chapter 14 • The Siege
  • chapter 15 • The Black Devil
• book three
  • chapter 16 • Leader of the Expedition
  • chapter 17 • “The Delirium of His Republicanism”
  • chapter 18 • Dreams on Fire
  • chapter 19 • Prisoner of the Holy Faith Army
  • chapter 20 • “Citizeness Dumas… Is Worried About the Fate of Her Husband”
  • chapter 21 • The Dungeon
  • chapter 22 • Wait and Hope
• epilogue • The Forgotten Statue
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note on Names
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

It’s Not Always Black And White: Caught Between Two Worlds

Outskirts Press
2013-01-18
100 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781478716693

John Reed, Ph.D.

John Reed knows from experience how difficult the life of a biracial person can be. He was born in Germany after World War II to a German-Caucasian mother and an African-American father. The difficulty of finding a place in society was compounded by his mother’s rejection of him; he spent the first year of his life in a convent, cared for by nuns. As the physical, mental, and verbal abuse John suffered from his mother were mirrored by a judgmental and racist society around him, he found himself in a crisis of identity and shattered self-esteem. In this searingly honest and thought-provoking memoir, John shows us how racism is still very much alive in our current “politically correct” world, and the ways in which biracial people struggle with knowing whether they are truly accepted, or if the people around them are just playing the game. John’s path to personal healing, which included learning about and embracing his heritage, and severing ties with those who abused and failed to accept him, is an inspiration to anyone who has fought the questions of acceptance and identity. No matter what your personal background and heritage, It’s Not Always Black And White will enlighten you about what it’s like to be a person of color in a world where being white is the norm, and will vividly show you that every person, regardless of color, deserves to be treated with dignity, love, and respect.