Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The double life of the title [White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret] plays out several ways. Born in Atlanta in 1893, [Walter] White was defined as Black by Southern laws and customs. Yet his enslaved forebears were raped by white owners, making him, according to family history, a great-grandson of William Henry Harrison. With fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair, he could easily have passed as white and ensured himself a better life.

Instead, White worked doggedly to force change. [A. J.] Baime depicts him as a superhero with a secret identity. In the 1920s he lived in Harlem as a Black man, taking on a crucial role in the fledgling NAACP while also fostering the Harlem Renaissance by nurturing Black artists like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston. He invited them to his high-profile parties, introduced them to white publishers like Mark Van Doren and Alfred Knopf. (His own books were also well received.)

Stuart Miller, “He risked his life to become a founding father of civil rights. Why was he forgotten?” The Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-02-09/walter-f-white-a-founder-of-civil-rights-white-lies-biography.

Writing in 2010 about the Idea of Racial Identity

Posted in Arts, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2010-01-21 04:23Z by Steven

Writing in 2010 about the Idea of Racial Identity

The 17th Annual Oxford Conference for the Book (2010-03-04 through 2010-03-06)
2010-03-05, 13:30 – 15:00 EST (Local Time)
Overby Center for Southern Journalism
University of Mississippi
Oxford, Mississippi

Ted Ownby, Professor History and Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
University of Mississippi

Bliss Broyard

W. Ralph Eubanks

Danzy Senna

Tags: Bliss Broyard, Danzy Senna, Oxford Conference for the Book, Ted Ownby, W. Ralph Eubanks

Mixed Race Studies

Writing in 2010 about the Idea of Racial Identity

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