Mixed Race Studies

Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis

University of South Carolina Press
May 2014
280 pages
9 b&w illus.
6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61117-352-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61117-353-6

Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Assistant Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies
Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore

A rare glimpse into the thoughts and experiences of a free black American woman in the nineteenth century

In Notes from a Colored Girl, Karsonya Wise Whitehead examines the life and experiences of Emilie Frances Davis, a freeborn twenty-one-year-old mulatto woman, through a close reading of three pocket diaries she kept from 1863 to 1865. Whitehead explores Davis’s worldviews and politics, her perceptions of both public and private events, her personal relationships, and her place in Philadelphia’s free black community in the nineteenth century.

Although Davis’s daily entries are sparse, brief snapshots of her life, Whitehead interprets them in ways that situate Davis in historical and literary contexts that illuminate nineteenth-century black American women’s experiences. Whitehead’s contribution of edited text and original narrative fills a void in scholarly documentation of women who dwelled in spaces between white elites, black entrepreneurs, and urban dwellers of every race and class.

Notes from a Colored Girl is a unique offering to the fields of history and documentary editing as the book includes both a six-chapter historical reconstruction of Davis’s life and a full, heavily annotated edition of her Civil War–era pocket diaries. Drawing on scholarly traditions from history, literature, feminist studies, and sociolinguistics, Whitehead investigates Davis’s diary both as a complete literary artifact and in terms of her specific daily entries.

From a historical perspective, Whitehead re-creates the narrative of Davis’s life for those three years and analyzes the black community where she lived and worked. From a literary perspective, Whitehead examines Davis’s diary as a socially, racially, and gendered nonfiction text. From a feminist studies perspective, she examines Davis’s agency and identity, grounded in theories elaborated by black feminist scholars. And, from linguistic and rhetorical perspectives, she studies Davis’s discourse about her interpersonal relationships, her work, and external events in her life in an effort to understand how she used language to construct her social, racial, and gendered identities.

Since there are few primary sources written by black women during this time in history, Davis’s diary—though ordinary in its content—is rendered extraordinary simply because it has survived to be included in this very small class of resources. Whitehead’s extensive analysis illuminates the lives of many through the simple words of one.

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Philadelphia Weekly
2013-11-13

Kennedy Allen et al.

Drexel prof Yaba Blay’s striking new photo book “One Drop” explores how a wide range of different skin tones affects Americans’ personal identities. In  this PW excerpt, eight Philadelphia-area residents of mixed heritage concur: However light they may be, they’re still most certainly Black. Our own Kennedy Allen agrees…

Growing up in Mt. Airy, an ethnic and economically diverse neighborhood, instilled within me a level of acceptance and tolerance regarding my fellow man that, confoundingly, many didn’t seem to share. I was one of seven Black kids in a class of 42. Because I spoke English properly and preferred rock to rap, I was deemed “White girl” by my racial peers—a label that haunted me for what felt like eons. I knew I wasn’t White, nor did I ever have the urge to be, outside of wishing my hair would blow in the wind like some of the girls in my class. Flash-forward to my final years of high school, in a black school where I was the “light-bright girl who talks White.” Dark-skinned people still sneer at me, somehow assuming that I believe myself to be “better” than they are because of my buttered-toffee skin tone.

When all is said and done, racial or ethnic identity rests upon the individual and their experiences. I identify myself as a black woman who happens to have Irish and Cherokee lineage. What of all the others who identify as black, but appear otherwise? Scholar and activist Arturo Schomburg, whose extensive collection of books and historical records of African people’s achievements eventually became the famed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y., identified as an Afro-Puerto Rican. (In fact, his passion for gathering all those documents was born after a grade-school teacher told him that black people had no history, heroes or accomplishments.) Would Schomburg’s experience be less valid because it fails to meet some homogenous notion of Blackness? Who has the right to determine these standards in the first place? And in an age of global interconnectedness and the instant, worldwide exchange of information and ideals, why does it still even matter?

Dr. Yaba Blay wondered some of the same things. A first-generation Ghanian-American and the co-director of Drexel’s Africana studies program, Blay has spent the past two years gathering vibrant portraits and intimate stories from nearly 60 individuals across the country in an attempt to shine some light upon questions of racial ambiguity and legitimacy. Those portraits now comprise a new book that she’s edited and published, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race—as well as an exhibit of the same name, currently on display at the Painted Bride Art Center…

Read the entire article and eight subject profiles from the book here.

A Sad Case of Amalgamation

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Volume 19, Number 211
1860-09-05
page 1, column 6
Source: Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection

The reporter of the Philadelphia Press has been around among the colored folks of Philadelphia, and In the course of his peregrination he met with the following case of practical amalgamation:

We were next gratified with something previously new to us—a case of practical amalgamation. We had wrought up our feelings to such abhorrence of the intermarriage of races, that nothing short of the absolute misery of families so produced was expected. The chronicle, however, must be true to the experience, and we are compelled to state that this single case of wedded amalgamation was not so repulsive in its effects as we bad wished it to be.

Being cautioned by the officer to say nothing of our prejudices, we passed through a cleanly-arched alley, and trod by a row of rear brick buildings. Hastily glancing through an open door, we saw a thin, neat-looking white woman industriously sewing. At her feet a negro child was playing and she stooped to kiss it as the door post hid her from view.  A black man was chopping wood in the yard. Three yellow children clustered around him, and at the moment the child which bad been gambolling at the woman’s feet tottered from the house and called him ‘Pappy!’

The man looked angrily at us, but he said nothing.

‘Do your children still help you at the market, Tom?’ said the officer.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, chopping away at the stick of wood. As he seemed adverse to making any reply, the officer said:

‘Such children as these I never knew—up at 5 o’clock every morning, and wheeling a heavy go-cart through the streets; they are going someday to be richer than their father.’

‘I hope so,’ said the man.  ‘God knows I am poor enough.’ He continued to chop.

‘Nonsense,’ said the officer. ‘Why, Tom, you take care of your money, never drink. How much better off are vou than your neighbors?’

‘I know that,’ said the man, interestedly, leaning upon his axe, ‘but I want to be rich enough to leave this street. I don’t want these boys to grow up with low people or to live in this unhealthy neighborhood. They are good boys, but I don’t like to tell them so. They make—the three of them—as much wages as I do.’

We understood from our guide that the negro and the woman were legally married; that she had been poor, and his attentions to her in poverty had placed her under obligations which ended in wedlock. As we passed out and peeped stealthily again at the woman, fondling her negro babe, she espied us and looked straightforwardly into our faces. There was no shame upon her cheeks.  She seemed to clasp her child still closer, and as we passed out of view we heard her singing.

‘After all,’ said the officer, ‘these children are better off than those miserable mulattoes who have no recognised fathers. If amalgamation is to become an institution, I prefer it sanctioned by marriage.’

We looked forward to that woman’s career. With the existing feelings of society, thrift and integrity will benefit her little; for the life she has chosen will ever cling to her, and every social advance she may make with her dusky husband will make her more opprobrious and abhorred. It is a hard case.

Annette John-Hall: CNN series cuts to the core of black identity

Philadelphia Inquirer
2012-12-07

Annette John-Hall, Inquirer Columnist

No surprise that Black in America, Soledad O’Brien’s documentary series on African American life and culture, was among CNN’s most-watched programs. No other show has offered a deeper look at what it means to be black, in all its complexities.

As provocative as the previous four broadcasts were, I dare say that nothing will cut to the core of black identity more than O’Brien’s fifth installment, Who is Black in America?, at 8 p.m. Sunday on CNN.

If you know Philadelphia, you’ve got to tune in. The documentary is flush with Philly folks.

Students Nayo Jones and Rebecca Khalil of the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement explore racial identity, sometimes painfully, under the compassionate guidance of instructor Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio. Drexel professor Yaba Blay—whose (1)ne Drop project gave O’Brien the impetus for the documentary—shares her own story.

Along with O’Brien, all attended a packed screening this week at Drexel.

Like any good documentary, Who Is Black in America?left me pondering fundamental questions: Just who is black in America? Is blackness predicated on skin color or a cultural state of mind? And who gets to decide?

One little drop

Through the years, skin color has been politicized and racialized. Just look at President Obama. Even though he identifies as a black man of mixed race, his identity is the topic of endless public debate. As if he’s going to change his answer.

After all, the “one-drop rule,” a law adopted by some Southern states in the early 20th century, designated a person black if s/he possessed even a trace of black heritage – in effect, only one drop of black blood. By that rule, our biracial president would have had no chance to enjoy the privileges conferred on pure-lineage whites.

Today, multichoice census forms allow us to check off what we truly are. Yet colorism continues to shackle us in a racialized society.

Fortunately for O’Brien, her parents made it easy for her. Growing up in a white community on Long Island, María de la Soledad Teresa O’Brien, fair-skinned, freckle-faced, big-Afroed daughter of an Afro-Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father, never had to grapple with the “What are you?” questions.

“My parents made it very clear: Do not let people tell you you’re not black and not Latino,” O’Brien, 46, told me. “They understood the hostility of the environment. … You needed to be steeled.”…

Read the entire article here.

Cultural Activities, Identities, and Mental Health Among Urban American Indians with Mixed Racial/Ethnic Ancestries

Race and Social Problems
Volume 2, Number 2 (2010)
pages 101-114
DOI: 10.1007/s12552-010-9028-9

Yoshitaka Iwasaki, Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences and Social Work
Temple University

Namorah Gayle Byrd, Assistant Professor, Developmental English
Gloucester County College, New Jersey

Focus groups were conducted to appreciate the voices of Urban American Indians (UAI) who have mixed ancestries residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Participants (15 women and 10 men, 19–83 years of age) with a variety of Native ancestries coming from different nations (i.e., blackfeet, blackminkwa, Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Lakota, Powhatan, Seminole, and Shawnee) reported to also have a Non-Native racial/ethnic ancestry such as African/black, Hispanic, and/or Caucasian/white. Specifically, this study provided evidence about (a) the complexity and challenge of being “mixed” UAI (e.g., “living a culture” as opposed to blood quantum in determining a personal identity) (b) the linkage of cultural identities to mental health (c) contributions of cultural activities to identities and mental health (e.g., therapeutic and healing functions of cultural activities), and (d) very limited urban Native-oriented mental health service (e.g., visions for Native American-centered mental health clinic in an urban setting). Building on those UAI’s voices, this paper provides a context for the need of a culturally respectful transformation of urban mental health system by highlighting the clinical significance of cultural identity and mental health promotion for UAI.

Read or purchase the article here.

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom or The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery

Louisiana State University Press
Originally Published: 1860
Published by LSU Press: 1999
120 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 5 halftones
ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-2320-1 Paper

William Craft

With a Foreword and Biographical Essay by

Richard J. M. Blackett,  Andrew Jackson Professor of History
Vanderbilt University

Husband and wife William and Ellen Craft’s [her mother was a slave and her father was her mother’s owner.] break from slavery in 1848 was perhaps the most extraordinary in American history. Numerous newspaper reports in the United States and abroad told of how the two—fair-skinned Ellen disguised as a white slave master and William posing as her servant—negotiated heart-pounding brushes with discovery while fleeing Macon, Georgia, for Philadelphia and eventually Boston. No account, though, conveyed the ingenuity, daring, good fortune, and love that characterized their flight for freedom better than the couple’s own version, published in 1860, a remarkable authorial accomplishment only twelve years beyond illiteracy. Now their stirring first-person narrative and Richard Blackett’s excellent interpretive pieces are brought together in one volume to tell the complete story of the Crafts.

Ellen Craft

Summary by Monique Pierce of Documenting The South:

Published in 1860, shortly before the start of the Civil War, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is the narrative of William and Ellen Craft‘s escape from slavery. Both were born and grew up in Georgia, and they lived in Macon prior to their escape. In December 1848 they devised a plan in which Ellen Craft, who was very light- skinned, would dress as a man and pretend to be a rheumatic seeking better treatment in Philadelphia. William was to accompany her and act as her slave. Relying exclusively on means of public transportation, including trains and steamers, they made their way to Savannah, then to Charleston, Wilmington, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, where they arrived on Christmas Day. They then relocated to Boston and sailed for England after the Fugitive Slave Law enabled slave hunters to pursue them even in free states. At the time this work was published, they were living in England with their sons. The narrative includes many anecdotes about slavery and freedom for Blacks and discusses how they were treated in both the South and the North.

Read the entire book in HTML format here.  You may also obtain it here.