{"id":15226,"date":"2011-07-30T05:39:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T05:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=15226"},"modified":"2011-11-14T00:07:59","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T00:07:59","slug":"the-clamorgans-one-family%e2%80%99s-history-of-race-in-america-review-eubanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=15226","title":{"rendered":"The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in America [Review: Eubanks]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in America [Review: Eubanks]<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Independent Review of Books<\/a>
\n2011-07-04<\/p>\n

W. Ralph Eubanks<\/a><\/strong>, Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress
\nAuthor of Ever Is a Long Time<\/em> and The House at the End of the Road<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Julie Winch, The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in America<\/a><\/em>, New York: Hill and Wang, 2011. pp. 424.<\/p>\n

In spite of the prominent role of race in our culture, American society has spent more than 200 years trying to find a way to downplay the role of it\u2014whether through proclaiming our society color blind or a melting pot\u2014with varying levels of success. Consequently, there are numerous stories of how race manifests itself as America\u2019s original sin, many involving families that crossed and bridged racial lines, including my own family\u2019s story<\/a>. Few of these stories are as complicated and fascinating as the one Julie Winch<\/a> tells in The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in America<\/em>.
\n\u00a0
\nThrough the life and times of one American family, the Clamorgans of St. Louis, Missouri<\/a>, Winch traces the evolving role race has played in family life, the law and broader American society, from slavery to abolition, to Reconstruction<\/a> and beyond. Today\u2019s millennial generation would label the Clamorgans as multiracial. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, and well into the 20th century, the one-drop rule<\/a> marked them with a taint of African ancestry, in spite of appearances to the contrary. Still, the Clamorgans challenged traditional notions of race and identity and carefully negotiated a way through society\u2019s complicated racial maze. To do this, they used the same confusing twists and turns used to define them as a means of furthering their own interests. As the author notes, the Clamorgans\u2019 story is one of money, land, power and race. But at its core this is the story of a family with a scrappy survival instinct that transcends race, which is why the reader gets drawn into this saga quickly….<\/p>\n

…Money was a means of whitening, since \u201ca dark-skinned individual with money often made the transition from \u2018black\u2019 to \u2018mulatto<\/a>.\u2019 The Clamorgans and other mixed-race people took the next step, moving from \u2018mulatto\u2019 to \u2018white.\u2019 \u201d Sometimes it was for a reason, other times it was because the census takers were confused by a person\u2019s appearance or last name. In St. Louis, some names were exclusively \u201ccolored,\u201d while others were exclusively white. Certain names existed in both communities, making the census taker\u2019s job more complicated…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in America [Review: Eubanks] The Washington Independent Review of Books 2011-07-04 W. Ralph Eubanks, Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress Author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road Julie Winch, The Clamorgans: One Family\u2019s History of Race in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,6462,6940,20],"tags":[777,7046,679],"class_list":["post-15226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-julie-winch","tag-the-washington-independent-review-of-books","tag-w-ralph-eubanks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}