Tag: W. H. Ellis

  • Jacoby’s prize-winning book tells the true story of William Ellis, a larger-than-life figure who was born on the U.S.-Mexico border in the twilight of slavery and inhabited a world divided along ambiguous racial lines.

  • Karl Jacoby talked about his book, “The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire.” He spoke at the 5th annual San Antonio Book Festival.

  • A Tale of Racial Passing and the U.S.-Mexico Border The New Yorker 2016-07-20 Jonathan Blitzer The African-American businessman William Ellis, pictured here around the year 1900, frequently passed as Mexican. COURTESY FANNY JOHNSON-GRIFFIN Some people knew him as William Ellis, and others as Guillermo Eliseo. He could be Mexican, Cuban, or even Hawaiian, depending on…

  • A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.

  • Texas slave passes as Mexican millionaire San Antonio Express-News San Antonio, Texas 2016-06-11 Joe O’Connell Former slave passes as Mexican millionaire Historian Karl Jacoby was driving near the Texas-Mexico border when he was stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol, the agency charged with keeping Mexicans out of the United States. He explained, to their dismay,…

  • Leaving to learn Columbia Daily Spectator 2015-12-02 Claire Liebmann Courtesy of Karl Jacoby Several years ago while browsing newspaper clippings online, Karl Jacoby, a history professor at Columbia, came across the story of William Ellis—a Texan slave who built a million dollar fortune while posing as a Mexican millionaire in New York, essentially hacking the…

  • National Affairs: Who Would Be King Time 1923-10-08 Word came to the U. S. that William Henry Ellis, who preferred to style himself Guillermo Enrique Eliseo, died in Mexico City. Mr. Ellis was one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department. He was known chiefly for the famous…

  • Racial Passing in the U.S. and Mexico in the Early Twentieth Century RSF Review: Research from the Russell Sage Foundation Russell Sage Foundation New York, New York 2015-01-22 This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the ongoing research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.…

  • Passing the Line Karl Jacoby 2012-12-20 Karl Jacoby, Professor of History Columbia University, New York, New York Who was Guillermo Eliseo? Such was the question that any number of people asked themselves during the Gilded Age as this enigmatic figure flitted in and out of an astonishing array of the era’s most noteworthy events—scandalous trials,…