{"id":25254,"date":"2012-09-09T01:10:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-09T01:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25254"},"modified":"2012-09-09T01:10:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T01:10:18","slug":"alexander-saxton-historian-and-novelist-dies-at-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25254","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Saxton, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 93"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Saxton, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 93<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2012-09-01<\/p>\n

Paul Vitello<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander Saxton<\/a>, who would go on to become a prominent historian of race in America, summed himself up in a blurb on the dust jacket of his first novel, \u201cGrand Crossing,\u201d published when he was 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt various times,\u201d he said, he had worked as \u201ca harvest hand, construction gang laborer, engine-wiper, freight brakeman, architectural apprentice, assistant to the assistant editor\u201d of a union newspaper, railroad switchman and columnist for The Daily Worker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Unmentioned were his upbringing on the East Side of Manhattan in a household where Thornton Wilder<\/a> and Aldous Huxley<\/a> were frequent dinner guests, and his schooling at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard.<\/p>\n

But in his biographical blurb, the young Mr. Saxton accomplished the first of many self-transformations. They included passage from upper-income childhood to working-class adulthood; from Harvard student to Chicago laborer; from novelist to union organizer and Socialist; from activist to academic…<\/p>\n

…His contributions as a cultural historian are considered his most enduring.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Saxton\u2019s first historical book, \u201cThe Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California<\/a>,\u201d became a landmark of labor history, describing how 19th- and 20th-century labor unions used racism against Chinese immigrants as a tool for unifying and organizing white union members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt challenged one of the foundational stories of the labor movement,\u201d said Eric Foner<\/a>, a Columbia University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. \u201cInstead of the story of solidarity and democracy usually told, Saxton showed how racism was one of labor\u2019s most important organizing tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

The critical success of the book helped Mr. Saxton establish one of the first Asian-American studies program in the United States at U.C.L.A. in the early 1970s.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

His 1975 paper \u201cBlackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology<\/a>,\u201d [March 1975]\u00a0tracing the links between blackface minstrelsy and the ideology of white supremacy, is considered one of the early texts in black history studies; and a 1990 book, \u201cThe Rise and Fall of the White Republic<\/a>,\u201d is known as one of the foundations of \u201ccritical whiteness studies<\/a>,\u201d an academic field that examines the assumptions underlying \u201cwhiteness\u201d as a racial designation and political organizing principle….<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Alexander Saxton, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 93 The New York Times 2012-09-01 Paul Vitello Alexander Saxton, who would go on to become a prominent historian of race in America, summed himself up in a blurb on the dust jacket of his first novel, \u201cGrand Crossing,\u201d published when he was 24. \u201cAt various times,\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,459,8,20],"tags":[8779,2640,11788,2327],"class_list":["post-25254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-alexander-saxton","tag-new-york-times","tag-paul-vitello","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25254","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=25254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}