Brown Bag: Mixed-race tension in early America

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2011-09-27 20:45Z by Steven

Brown Bag: Mixed-race tension in early America

The Daily Campus: The Independent Voice of Southern Methodist University Since 1915
Dallas, Texas
2011-09-21

Logan May

The struggle of mixed race families in Southwest America was a daunting issue in the early 19th century.

As part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series of the Southwest, SMU Director of Southwest Studies Andrew Graybill shared a detailed account of a mixed White-Native American family from Montana who faced an exponential amount of racial discrimination.

In the Texana Room of DeGolyer Library Wednesday afternoon, listeners gathered and silently snacked on their lunches as Graybill spoke of the Clarke family.

“To walk in two worlds was impossible,” Graybill said, “whites looked at mixed blood with repulsion.”

His book, entitled A Mixture of So Many Bloods, recalled the life of Helen Clarke and the backlash she received for being the daughter of a white man and a Native American woman. At this time in the early 1800s, marriage within the two races was common, and children served as brokers between the two groups. Helen’s father had a prominent role as a fur trader; therefore, the family was often the talk of the town…

Read the entire article here.

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