Mixed Race Studies

UNF professor explores the impact of skin tone on the everyday lives of African-American women

The Florida Times-Union
2016-01-18

Rhema Thompson

JeffriAnne Wilder always knew African-Americans came in many shades. She saw it in her own family, from her light-skinned older sister to her two dark-skinned brothers. Her complexion fell somewhere in the middle.

“I saw the variation at home, but I didn’t place any value on it,” she recalled.

Around age 10 that began to change. She noticed the light-skinned girls in her predominantly black Cleveland elementary class seemed to be treated differently. Other students seemed enamored by their creamy complexions and wavy hair.

Decades later, that sentiment hit closer to home when she became pregnant with her daughter.

“I had lots of people just assume because my ex-husband is biracial and light-skinned with green eyes that she was going to be light-skinned, too,” she said. “ ‘Oh, you’re going to have the prettiest daughter. She’s going to be so pretty. She’s going to be light and blah, blah, blah,’ and I remember telling people ‘What happens if she’s not light-skinned? What if she ends up like me?’ ”

Now, an associate sociology professor at the University of North Florida and director of the school’s new Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations, Wilder is sharing her observations and the experiences of 66 other black women in her first published book “Color Stories.”…

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SANDS OF TIME: American Beach nears 80-year anniversary

The Florida Times-Union
Jacksonville, Florida
2014-10-13

Alec Newell

The extended family of Zephaniah Kingsley, Anna Jai, and their descendants have been major players in shaping the history of Northeast Florida during three colonial periods, American territorial times, Florida statehood and on into the 20th century.

Between Lake George and the St. Marys River, the fingerprints they left seem to be everywhere.

Most of us are familiar with the story of how slave trader Zepheniah Kingsley bought a 13-year-old “African princess” — Anna Madgigine Jai — in Cuba and brought her back to his Laurel Grove Plantation in what is now Orange Park. The couple produced four children, and Zephaniah never wavered in his acknowledgement of Anna as his wife.

Anna, later as a freed woman of color, would own her own slaves, plantation property, and live at various other family residences along the lower St. Johns River. These properties included Mandarin (later owned by Harriet Beecher Stowe), Kingsley Plantation (Ft. George Island), Chesterfield (part of the Jacksonville University Campus), Floral Bluff (Arlington), and Strawberry Plantation (Arlington Bluff), where she was buried. Probably less well-known is the Kingsley connection to the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and American Beach…

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