Mixed Race Studies
Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
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- The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health
- Loving Across Racial and Cultural Boundaries: Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health Conference
- Call for Proposals: 2026 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at UCLA
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- You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness.
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Tag: William Ellis
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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.
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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.
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Guillermo Eliseo was a wealthy Mexican banker and broker who lived in New York City in the early 20th Century. But, Eliseo had a secret. He was actually born into slavery on a cotton plantation in southern Texas, and his real name was William Ellis.
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Biography: ‘The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire,’ by Karl Jacoby The Dallas Morning News 2016-06-24 Karen M. Thomas, Professor of Journalism Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas From all accounts, Guillermo Enrique Eliseo commanded attention. The elegantly dressed Mexican-born Wall Street baron in Gilded Age Manhattan was known…
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Across the Border The Nation 2016-07-21 Michael A. Elliott, Professor of English Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia William Henry Ellis, (Photo courtesy of Fanny Johnson-Griffin) A new biography of William Henry Ellis reminds us how much we still don’t know about the elusive history of racial subterfuge in America. When, in 1912, James Weldon Johnson published…
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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…
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A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.
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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,…
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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…
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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…