INGRID DINEEN-WIMBERLY. The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916. |
INGRID DINEEN-WIMBERLY. The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916.
The American Historical Review
Volume 126, Issue 2 (June 2021)
pages 797–798
DOI: 10.1093/ahr/rhab307
Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Associate Professor of History
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly. The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916. (Borderlands and Transcultural Studies.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Pp. xxxi, 267.
Why were so many African American leaders in the Reconstruction era from mixed-race backgrounds? This is the question Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly’s The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862–1916 sets out to answer. Dineen-Wimberly’s argument is encapsulated in her title, reflecting her contention that although many post–Civil War Black leaders could have chosen to pass as white they instead identified deliberately as Black. This choice, Dineen-Wimberly argues, rested on their ability as Black people to achieve political power or economic success. This ability to succeed because they were Black thus constituted the “allure” of Blackness. Dineen-Wimberly contends that her study pushes against a body of scholarship…
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Tags: American Historical Review, Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly, The American Historical Review