Mixed Race Studies

Anti-Miscegenation Movement

Columbus Enquirer-Sun
Columbus, Georgia
1886-09-24
page 5, column 3

Source: Digital Library of Georgia

Organization In Louisiana to Prevent the Intermarriage of Whites and Blacks

New Orleans. September 20.—A practical movement has been inaugurated in Bossier parish, in this state, for the abolition of miscegenation. There have been during the past year or so several spasmodic efforts in this direction, both in Louisiana and Mississippi. Self-constituted vigilance committees have warned white men with negro wives and mistresses to leave them and lead a regular life, and when this failed have ridden through the parish, severely whipping both men and women who disobeyed this order.  In Mississippi there were several arrests, convictions and sentences for violation of the law prohibiting intermarriages between the races, and in Louisiana one man was severely cut in a scrimmage arising from this movement. But these anti-miscegenation raids were spasmodic, the freaks of a few wild young men. The present movement is more serious and more general, and is a thorough and practical organization, like that of the prohibitionist, to break up miscegenation.

The first meeting was held in Bossier parish in July, whore the subject was generally discussed, and adjourned over to this month to find the drift of public opinion. It was found that public sentiment among the whites was well nigh unanimous on the subject. The recent meeting held at Cottage Grove, in the upper portion of Bossier parish, was the result. There was no secrecy or mystery about it. It was an open mass meeting, in which all the people of the neighborhood—farmers, clergymen and others—assembled. The meeting was opened with prayer and presided over by a clergyman. The resolutions were of the strongest character. Those guilty of miscegenation were threatened with social boycott, and warned that they were insulting the race feelings and moral principles of the community. But the gist of the meeting was the appointment of a vigilance committee of nineteen to serve notices on these white men living with negro women—the vigilants were not instructed as to what they should if this warning is unheeded—and the appointment of another committee to assist in the organization of anti-miscegenation societies in other parishes in the state.

This plan of operation is warmly supported by the press. The Bossier Banner declares that race purity must be preserved at all hazards, the line must be sharply and distinctly drawn, and those who cross it must pay the penalty. The Robeline Reporter of Natchitoches, edited by the father of the present attorney-general of the state, approves the idea.

As this sentiment prevails in most of the neighboring parishes, it is thought that the present organization, by giving a start to the anti-miscegenation sentiment, which in this part of the state is now stronger than the anti-liquor sentiment, it will spread through north Louisiana if not into the neighboring states of Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas. There is no law in Louisiana against the intermarriage or cohabitation of f[r]aces, this prohibition, which was strongly urged by many persons, being voted down in the late constitutional convention, but miscegenation is growing rarer every day, in deference to the strong public sentiment on this point.

Intertextual Links: Reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

College Literature
Volume 40, Number 1, Spring 2013
pages 121-138
DOI: 10.1353/lit.2013.0004

Robin Miskolcze, Associate Professor of English
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California

Though literary critics of James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man convincingly regard the novel as reminiscent of the slave narrative, few readers have considered the scope and significance of Johnson’s reference to a major best-selling literary predecessor: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Johnson’s explicit reference to Stowe’s 1852 novel early in his story solicits a reading of the intertextual links between the two novels. Specifically, I explore how Johnson’s narrator and Stowe’s Uncle Tom are connected by the symbol of the coin necklace, a gift from white men that carries a paternalistic force. In addition to Uncle Tom, I also analyze the similarities between Johnson’s narrator and Stowe’s biracial character, Adolph. Comparing Johnson’s and Stowe’s narrative choices for their biracial characters illustrates the trajectory of cultural politics involved in defining race and normative sexuality from the pre-Civil War years to the early twentieth century.

Yes We Can? White Racial Framing and the Obama Presidency, 2nd Edition

Routledge
292 pages
2012-12-17
Pages: 296
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-64536-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-64538-6

Adia Harvey Wingfield, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Georgia State University

Joe Feagin, Ella C. McFadden Professor of Sociology
Texas A & M University

The first edition of this book offered one of the first social science analyses of Barack Obama’s historic electoral campaigns and early presidency. In this second edition the authors extend that analysis to Obama’s service in the presidency and to his second campaign to hold that presidency. Elaborating on the concept of the white racial frame, Harvey Wingfield and Feagin assess in detail the ways white racial framing was deployed by the principal characters in the electoral campaigns and during Obama’s presidency. With much relevant data, this book counters many commonsense assumptions about U.S. racial matters, politics, and institutions, particularly the notion that Obama’s presidency ushered in a major post-racial era. Readers will find this fully revised and updated book distinctively valuable because it relies on sound social science analysis to assess numerous events and aspects of this historic campaign.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. White Racial Framing and Barack Obama’s First Campaign
• Chapter 2. “Too Black?” Or “Not Black Enough?”
• Chapter 3. From Susan B. Anthony to Hillary Clinton
• Chapter 4. The Cool Black Man vs. The Fist-Bumping Socialist
• Chapter 5. The Dr. Jeremiah Wright Controversy
• Chapter 6. The 2008 Primaries and Voters of Color
• Chapter 7. November 4, 2008 : A Dramatic Day in U.S. History
• Chapter 8. “Post-Racial” America?
• Chapter 9. President Obama’s 2009-2013 Term and the 2011-2012 Primaries
• Chapter 10. The 2012 National Election
• Endnotes
• Index

Beyond Selma-to-Stonewall

The New York Times
2013-01-27

By including gay rights in the arc of the struggle for civil rights — the road “through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall” — President Obama linked his presidency to ending antigay discrimination and underscored the legal wrong of denying gay people the freedom to marry.

 “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” Mr. Obama famously said in his second Inaugural Address, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Now that Mr. Obama has declared that he believes denying gay people the right to wed is not only unfair and morally wrong but also legally unsupportable, the urgent question is how he will translate his words into action. To start, he should have his solicitor general file a brief in the Proposition 8 case being argued before the Supreme Court in March, saying that California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional…

…ust a day after the inauguration, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said that while Mr. Obama supports same-sex marriage as a policy matter, the president still believes it is an issue for individual states to decide. That was Mr. Obama’s formulation when he first announced his support for same-sex marriage in May, and even then it made no sense, except perhaps as political cover approaching the general election campaign.

Marriage is traditionally regulated by the states, but there are constitutional limits on what states may do. The Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia prevented states from forbidding marriages between interracial couples like Mr. Obama’s own parents…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

With Obama, not a post-racial nation, but something more complex

The Washington Post
2013-01-21

Marc Fisher, Staff Writer

The huge oil painting propped up on a bridge table at 13th and F streets NW was arresting enough to stop people even as they hurried toward the Mall. There they were, heroes of black America, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur, Huey Newton and Barack Obama, all on horseback in a classic Western tableau.

One after another, potential customers, almost all of them black, stepped up to inspect the painting and the $20 prints of it that were for sale Monday. Then they did a double take, because the couple selling the prints, Corey Francis and Kelly Allen, were white.

Francis pointed to the center of the painting, to a convincing likeness of the president: “That’s Will Smith, isn’t it?”

A suspicious silence fell over his black customers — was the white guy making fun or having fun? And then Francis smiled, they all cracked up, and three more Obama supporters bought a print.

On the day the nation witnessed the second swearing-in of the first black president, race mattered, as it has at every turn throughout American history. But blacks and whites along the Mall and the parade route, as well as others across the land, say it matters in different ways at the midpoint of this historic presidency…

Read the entire article here.

(1)NE DROP: Fact, Fiction, or Fate?

Drexel University
James E. Marks Intercultural Center (Lower Level)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Monday, 2013-02-04, 17:00-19:00 EST (Local Time)

Africana Studies and the Office of Equality & Diversity present (1)NE DROP: Fact, Fiction, or Fate? featuring Dr. Yaba Blay, artistic director of the (1)NE DROP PROJECT and assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies, Drexel University. Dr. Yaba’s work with (1)NE DROP is currently being featured as part of CNN’s documentary “Who is Black in America?”

This event will explore what Blackness is and what Blackness looks like. On the whole, the project seeks to raise social awareness and spark community dialogue about the complexities of Blackness as both an identity and a lived reality.

(1)NE DROP literally explores the “other” faces of Blackness—those who may not immediately be recognized, accepted or embraced as “Black” in our visually racialized society. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information about the (1)NE DROP PROJECT, please visit http://1nedrop.com/…

For more information, click here.

Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Will Read Civil War Poems Jan. 30

The Library of Congress
News Releases
Washington, D.C.
2013-01-04

Press contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639
Public contact: Robert Casper (202) 707-5394

U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will read selections from her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection “Native Guard,” in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and in conjunction with the Library of Congress exhibition “The Civil War in America.”
 
The reading will be at noon on Wednesday, Jan. 30, in Room 119 on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. A book-signing will follow. Sponsored by the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center, the event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not needed.
 
In “Native Guard,” Trethewey uses poetry to give voice to the Louisiana Native Guards, one of the first regiments of black soldiers recruited by the Union Army during the Civil War. Trethewey, in 2001, had researched “Native Guard” using primary-source documents from the Library’s Manuscript Division and later spent time writing the book in the Library’s Main Reading Room.
 
Trethewey, named Poet Laureate in June 2012 by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, is the author of four poetry collections and a book of nonfiction. In January 2012, she was named Poet Laureate of Mississippi for a four-year term and will continue in the position during her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate.
 
“The Civil War in America” exhibition, which commemorates the sesquicentennial of the war, features more than 200 unique items that reveal the complexity of the Civil War through those who experienced it firsthand. Through diaries, letters, maps, song sheets, newspapers and broadsides, photographs, drawings and unusual artifacts, the exhibition chronicles the sacrifices and accomplishments of those—from both the North and South—whose lives were lost or affected by the events of 1861-1865…

Read the entire press release here.

Among Blacks, Pride Is Mixed With Expectations for Obama

The New York Times
2013-01-20

Susan Saulny

The Rev. Greggory L. Brown, a 59-year-old pastor of a small Lutheran church, committed himself to ministry and a life pursuing social justice on April 4, 1968 — the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by an assassin’s bullet.

And four years ago, like so many African-Americans around the country, he saw Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency as nothing short of a shocking validation of Dr. King’s vision of a more perfect union, where the content of character trumps the color of skin. “I was so excited when he was giving that first inauguration speech,” said Mr. Brown, of Oakland, Calif. “I could feel it in my bones.”

On Monday, when President Obama places his hand on Dr. King’s personal Bible to take a second, ceremonial oath of office, he will be symbolically linking himself to the civil rights hero. But Mr. Brown, along with other African-Americans interviewed recently, said their excitement would be laced with a new expectation, that Mr. Obama move to the forefront of his agenda the issues that Dr. King championed: civil rights and racial and economic equality.

In interviews with experts and black leaders, some, like Mr. Brown, say they have been disappointed by the slow pace of change for African-Americans, whose children, for instance, are still more likely to live in poverty than those of any other race.

“The hope for Obama’s presidency was that there would be more help for places like Oakland and other urban areas that need support, safety and jobs,” Mr. Brown said. “He made people feel like anything is possible.”

African-Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of the president, as evidenced by their enthusiastic turnout on Election Day and for the inauguration festivities and Monday’s holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday. Thousands of black Americans have descended on Washington from across the nation for the many parties and observances and visits to the King memorial.

They have developed a protective stance toward Mr. Obama, acknowledging the limits of his power and the voraciousness of his critics. Many cite the power of representation, the visual message of a prosperous, cohesive black family being beamed around the country and the world, and the untold aspirations that vision inspires.

But African-Americans roundly reject the notion that Mr. Obama’s election has eased racial tensions or delivered the nation to a new post-racial reality.

“I think the great mass of black people have shown tremendous patience, discipline and understanding, recognizing the dilemma that he faces,” said Randall L. Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Race Question: A Negro Man With a White Wife—Some Nice Points of Law—Indians Have Greater Nuptial Privileges.

Columbus Enquirer-Sun
Columbus, Georgia
Saturday, 1886-11-20
page 8, columns 3-4

Source: Digital Library of Georgia

A very interesting case, both as to the facts and the nice legal points involved, was tried this week at the circuit court in Seale [Alabama].  A negro man was on trial, charged with living in adultery with an alleged white woman.  The prisoner had been living with the woman as his wife for quite a number of years, and had begotten by her a family of children.  As the parties were seated within the bar of the court, they formed an interesting group. The man was as black as midnight, and in appearance, showed prominently every characteristic of the African make up. The woman, on the other hand, was white of skin and had in every liniament of her features the Caucassian cast of countenance. Their two boys, aged respectively about 8 and 10, sat between the black father on the one side and the white mother on the the other, and were of a yellow or copper color.

The defense was based on the position that the woman, although white to all appearances, was yet of mixed blood. The state conceded that if the woman was of such mixed blood, as in contemplation of law, she would be deemed a negro; that then the man could not be found guilty. But the state insisted that if the woman was in fact, or in law, a white woman, that then her marriage with the defendant was unlawful and invalid, and the living together being admitted, the man would be guilty as charged.  So the case tuned on the point whether the woman was of white or mixed blood.

On this point the woman herself testified that as far back as could remember she was living with negroes; that she had never seen either of her parents, but that her mother was a white woman, and she had been told that her father was a bright mulatto or part Indian.

No other positive testimony was introduced. The state asked the court to charge the jury that if they believed the woman’s testimony that then they must find the prisoner guilty, and argued in support of the request that the woman having been shown to be of white maternity, that by legal presumption she herself ws white until the contrary was shown, or until she was shown to be of negro paternity; that this legal presumption put the burden of proof upon the defendant, which burden was not lifted by her vague and hearsay testimony as to the mixed blood of her father. The court charged as requested.

The defense insisted that testimony about one’s own nativity, such as age, place of birth, parentage, etc., was, in the absence of better testimony, a matter of common report, and as the woman had testified that she had been told that her father was of mixed blood or part Indian, that her testimony on that point should have its due weight, and ashed the court to charge that, looking at the whole testimony, if the jury had a reasonable doubt us to whether the woman was of white or mixed blood, that then they must acquit.

The court again charged as requested.

It cropped out incidentally in the discussion that although it is unlawful for whites and negroes to intermarry, yet one of aboriginal blood may marry either white or black according to his own supreme election and not be subject to any legal penalty. So that, if one is arraigned on a charge of miscegenation, they have only to induce the belief that they are of Indian origin and thereby escape the clutches of the law. There are some curious things in municipal as well as natural law. In this case the verdict was not guilty.

The Effect of Parents’ Ethnic Socialization Practices on Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem and Psychological Adjustment of Multi Ethnic Children in Malaysia

World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
Issue 72 (December 2012)
pages 807-810

Chua Bee Seok

Rosnah Ismail

Jasmine Adela Mutang

Shaziah Iqbal

Nur Farhana Ardillah Aftar

Alfred Chan Huan Zhi

Ferlis Bin Bahari

Lailawati Madlan

Hon Kai Yee

The present study aims to explore the role of parents’ ethnic socialization practices contributes to the ethnic identity development, self-esteem and psychological adjustment of multi ethnic children in Sabah, Malaysia. A total of 342 multi ethnic children (age range = 10 years old to 14 years old; mean age = 12.65 years, SD = 0.88) and their parents participated in the present study. The modified version of Multi group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), The Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (FESM). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) and Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale Edition 2 (BERS-2) were used in this study. The results showed that: i) parents’ ethnic socialization practice was a strong predictor of ethnic identity development of multi ethnic children; ii) parents’ ethnic socialization practice also was a significant predictor of self-esteem of multi ethnic children; iii) parents’ ethnic socialization practice was not a significant predictor of psychological adjustment of multi ethnic children. The results of this study showed the implications parents’ ethnic socialization practices and ethnic identity development in successful multi ethnic families.

Read the entire article here.