Mixed Race Studies

A president’s past yields a modern parable

The Berkshire Eagle
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
2017-01-24

Jenn Smith

A tree is planted and dedicated to the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings, at Monticello’s Mulberry Row. Mulberry Row was the center of activity of Jefferson’s 5,000-acre agricultural enterprise. According to the Monticello website, it was populated by more than 20 dwellings, workshops, and storehouses between 1770 and the sale of Monticello in 1831. PHOTO PROVIDED BY JANE FELDMAN

Students learn about black history in Thomas Jefferson’s family

PITTSFIELD — History can play a crucial role in our futures, if we listen to it.

In 2002, photographer, Jane Feldman, who shares her time between the Berkshires and New York City, and Shannon Lanier, the sixth great-grandson of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, worked together to publish through Random House, “Jefferson’s Children: The Story of One American Family.”

The book details, in family album and portrait style, Lanier’s trip across the country to retrace the footsteps of his maternal ancestor, Madison Hemings, the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Hemings was Jefferson’s African-American slave.

With increasing discussions and divides developing across the nation regarding race and rights, Lanier and Feldman have decided to revive a series of tours and talks — originally conducted after the book’s release — about the book and its themes of identity, family and the varying perspectives of American history and culture.

“We believe that one of the things that will help us all navigate through this complicated time in our history is the ability to understand where we’ve come from and where we are going as individuals and as a nation,” Feldman said…

…The co-authors also noted how people aren’t always as they seem; for example how many light-skinned members of the Jefferson-Hemings lineage would go on to “pass” in society, that is, take advantage of the social statuses that came with looking like a white person, including freedom from slavery.

But the side effect of passing, is some future generations grew unaware of their black heritage, some even becoming racist, without knowing their own black blood lines…

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“Red Velvet” spins a fascinating true story

The Berkshire Eagle
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
2015-08-13

Jeffrey Borak, Entertainment Editor and Theater Critic

LENOX — Actor Ira Aldridge isn’t in the American Theater Hall of Fame; his name is barely a whisper in the annals of American theater. That shouldn’t be, say director Daniela Varon and actor John Douglas Thompson, who is playing Aldridge in “Red Velvet,” a new play by Lolita Chakrabarti that had its world premiere in October 2012 at the Tricycle Theatre in London and its American premiere in March 2014 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Born a few years after the start of the French Revolution, Aldridge died a few years after the end of our Civil War — a megastar in Europe, but virtually unknown here.

“I was 17 when I first heard about Aldridge,” Varon said during a joint interview with Thompson in the lobby of Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse, where the production officially opens at 7:30 tonight after a week of previews. It is scheduled to run in rotating repertory through Sept. 13.

“He gave up everything to go to England to become an actor,” Varon said.

Aldridge fashioned a career performing throughout through Europe and the UK. While he was known primarily as a tragedian, he also had a reputation as a good comedic actor.

He outraged London critics but awed audiences when, one night in 1833, he replaced the ailing Edmund Kean as Othello, at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.

…Born in New York in 1807, Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, England in 1824, where he met and married Margaret Gill, a Yorkshire woman.

“He was 26 when he married her, She was 18,” Thompson said. “He already had had a lifetime of experience. He was not a young 26.” Despite a solid marriage, he was a notorious womanizer and fathered several children, in and out of wedlock.

Between 1825 and 1833, he played theaters throughout the United Kingdom. He made his first tour of Europe in 1852, playing not only Othello but also Lear, Richard III, Shylock, Macbeth. He died in Lodz in 1867, where he was given a state funeral…

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Elizabeth Liang finds home: Performance at Williams College ’62 Center

The Berkshire Eagle
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
2014-09-17

Madeline Vuong, Special to Berkshires Week & Shires of Vermont

WILLIAMSTOWN — “Where are you from?”

It’s an easy question on the surface, but a more complicated matter if you’re Elizabeth Liang, a child of mixed-race parentage, who grew up in six different countries — Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Morocco, Egypt and the United States.

“‘Where are you from?’ was a question I got with almost boring regularity,” Liang said.

But as soon as she tried to answer, many people’s eyes glazed over, she said, and they assumed she and they had nothing in common. She learned not to talk about her life experiences.

“I listened instead,” she said.

She didn’t want to sound as though she were bragging, or as though she thought she was more worldly than her peers, she said, because that would isolate her more.

But after a childhood of staying quiet and trying to blend in, Liang decided she needed to talk openly about the experience of growing up internationally, especially as a mixed-race woman. Drawing on her training as a professional actor, she created a solo show, “Alien Citizen,” which she will perform tonight at the ‘62 Center at Williams College.

“[My show is] very personal, from a kid and teen’s perspective of living in these countries,” Liang said: “What it’s like to bike to school in a Cairo suburb, what Christmas in Guatemala is like, what it feels like to get stuck in a sandstorm on the sidewalks of Casablanca. And because I’m a kid and teenager through most of the show, there’s all the first love and crushes, and caring-about-being-cool stuff, too…

Read the entire article here.