{"id":52359,"date":"2017-03-12T01:45:55","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T01:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=52359"},"modified":"2017-03-12T01:45:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T01:45:55","slug":"the-strange-career-of-william-ellis-texas-slave-to-mexican-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=52359","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Career of William Ellis: Texas Slave to Mexican Millionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.columbia.edu\/content\/strange-career-william-ellis-texas-slave-mexican-millionaire\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>The Strange Career of William Ellis: Texas Slave to Mexican Millionaire<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.columbia.edu\" target=\"_blank\">Columbia News: Office of Communications and Public Affairs<\/a><br \/>\nColumbia University, New York, New York<br \/>\n2016-06-28<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"552\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/news.columbia.edu\/content\/strange-career-william-ellis-texas-slave-mexican-millionaire\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.columbia.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/public\/field\/image\/Karl_Jacoby.jpg\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/karljacoby.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><small>Karl Jacoby<\/small><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The odds were certainly against William Henry Ellis, who was born into slavery on a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Texas\" target=\"_blank\">Texas<\/a> cotton plantation near the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mexico\" target=\"_blank\">Mexico<\/a> border.<\/p>\n<p>But a combination of sheer moxie, an ability to speak Spanish and an olive skin allowed Ellis to reinvent himself. By the turn of the 20th century, he was Guillermo Enrique Eliseo, a successful Mexican entrepreneur with an office on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wall_Street\" target=\"_blank\">Wall Street<\/a>, an apartment on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eighth_Avenue_(Manhattan)#Central_Park_West\" target=\"_blank\">Central Park West<\/a> and business dealings with companies and corporations halfway around the world.<\/p>\n<p>His unusual life story is told in a new book titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44426\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire<\/em><\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/karljacoby.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Karl Jacoby<\/a>, a professor in the history department and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cser.columbia.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race<\/a>. Ellis \u201clearned how to be what people wanted him to be, and how to be sure that people would see what they want to see,\u201d Jacoby said&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/news.columbia.edu\/content\/strange-career-william-ellis-texas-slave-mexican-millionaire\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The odds were certainly against William Henry Ellis, who was born into slavery on a Texas cotton plantation near the Mexico border.<\/p>\n<p>But a combination of sheer moxie, an ability to speak Spanish and an olive skin allowed Ellis to reinvent himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,21,459,8,103,6462,1249,20],"tags":[26425,4415,22157,19293,22156],"class_list":["post-52359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mexico","category-passing-2","category-texas","category-usa","tag-columbia-news","tag-columbia-university","tag-guillermo-enrique-eliseo","tag-karl-jacoby","tag-william-henry-ellis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52359","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=52359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52360,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52359\/revisions\/52360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}