Mixed Race Studies

Oral history interview with Lawrence Dennis, 1967

Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections
Columbia Center for Oral History
Columbia University, New York, New York
Digitized 2010 (Originally recorded in 1967)
DOI: 10.7916/d8-cpb1-1692

Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977) interviewed by William R. Keylor (1944-).

Listen to the interview here.

“My Uncle’s Cousin’s Great-Grandma Were a Cherokee” and I am Descended from an Ashanti King: The American Blood Idiom in the Simple Stories

The Langston Hughes Review
Volume 27, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” at 100: Part One Shane Graham and Chiyuma Elliott (2021)
pages 29-56
DOI: 10.5325/langhughrevi.27.1.0029

DeLisa D. Hawkes, Assistant Professor of English
University of Texas, El Paso

Langston Hughes satirizes America’s obsession with so-called “racial purity” in his stories featuring Jesse B. Semple to shed light upon internalized racism and white American attempts to erase US histories that complicate the standardized black-white color line. In his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1920), the speaker challenges a singular view of the many Black histories that exist through the metaphor of rivers. In his Simple stories, Hughes’s character Jesse B. Semple reflects on American Blackness and blood stereotypes that impact racial identity formation and community building. By invoking the “Indian grandmother” and royal African ancestor tropes, Hughes complicates those compartmentalized identities and US histories implied via the American blood idiom to denote associations with enslavement that bolster notions of intraracial difference and white supremacist ideology. Hughes’s Simple stories culminate his trajectory in establishing African American pride in African ancestry and an anticolonial rejection of racial purity as a legal and social principle that contributes to monolithic conceptions of American Blackness.

Read or purchase the article here.

Seeking Black, Multiracial Women for Research Study

2021-12-19

Shwana Gann, Ph.D. Candidate
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Are you a Black, multiracial woman aspiring to be a senior leader? Has your employer recently implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in response to the race-based social unrest of 2020?

You may be the person I am looking for!

I am searching for volunteers to participate in a recorded, confidential, hour-long 1:1 virtual Zoom interview as part of research to understand how Black, multiracial women describe the level of organizational fairness they experience in their workplace.

Your participation will be a contribution to current research about racial equity in the workplace. Please feel free to pass this along to anyone else that you think would be interested in participating. Eligible participants will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win $50 (USD) as a thank you for their contribution.

Eligible participants:

• are Multiracial women 18+ years of age
• have at least one biological parent that racially identifies as Black
• are full-time employees (working at least 30 hours/week) in a mid-level position
• aspire to be a senior leader
• have worked in their current organization for at least 2 years
• work in an organization with new or renewed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in response to the racially charged social unrest following events in the spring and summer of 2020

Some examples of DEI initiatives include but are not limited to:

• establishing or restructuring a Diversity Council or task force
• establishing or restructuring Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) or Affinity Groups
• hiring a dedicated DEI professional
• publishing public statements condemning police brutality, racism, and discrimination
• implementing DEI training
• conducting pay and policy audits
• conducting DEI climate assessments/employee surveys

If you would like to volunteer, follow the link here to complete the online eligibility form. For more information, contact Shawna Gann at sgann@ego.thechicagoschool.edu.