{"id":51221,"date":"2017-01-17T00:25:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T00:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51221"},"modified":"2017-01-17T00:25:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T00:25:37","slug":"writing-the-biography-of-a-black-person-who-passed-for-white-in-20th-century-america-adds-an-extra-layer-of-difficulty-to-the-detective-work-any-biographer-must-undertake-this-is-especially-true-sinc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51221","title":{"rendered":"Writing the biography of a black person who passed for white in 20th-century America adds an extra layer of difficulty to the detective work any biographer must undertake. This is especially true since Herriman seems never to have addressed his deception in his personal writings or confided his feelings about racial identity to family or friends."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Writing the biography of a black person who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">passed for white<\/a> in 20th-century America adds an extra layer of difficulty to the detective work any biographer must undertake. This is especially true since <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Herriman\" target=\"_blank\">[George] Herriman<\/a> seems never to have addressed his deception in his personal writings or confided his feelings about racial identity to family or friends. He claimed he came from a family of bakers and had worked in his youth as a house painter and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barker_(occupation)\" target=\"_blank\">carnival barker<\/a>. In truth he was the great-grandson of Stephen Herriman, a married white boat\u2019s captain from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_Island\" target=\"_blank\">Long Island<\/a> with roots in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/England\" target=\"_blank\">England<\/a>, who purchased enslaved workers after settling in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louisiana\" target=\"_blank\">Louisiana<\/a>, and Justine Olivier, a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Free_people_of_color\" target=\"_blank\">free woman of color<\/a>\u201d who engaged in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=7657\" target=\"_blank\">pla\u00e7age<\/a> relationship in which her lover financially supported her and her two children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Nelson George, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51215\" target=\"_blank\">Invisibly Black: A Life of George Herriman, Creator of \u2018Krazy Kat\u2019<\/a>,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, January 12, 2017. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/12\/books\/review\/krazy-george-herriman-biography-michael-tisserand.html\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/12\/books\/review\/krazy-george-herriman-biography-michael-tisserand.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing the biography of a black person who passed for white in 20th-century America adds an extra layer of difficulty to the detective work any biographer must undertake. This is especially true since [George] Herriman seems never to have addressed his deception in his personal writings or confided his feelings about racial identity to family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9929,26013,25524,13665,2640,26012,2327],"class_list":["post-51221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-george-herriman","tag-justine-olivier","tag-michael-tisserand","tag-nelson-george","tag-new-york-times","tag-stephen-herriman","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51221","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=51221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51222,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51221\/revisions\/51222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}