Sometimes one whole side would be blank. Her father was dying, she could never come back, she would never see her brothers again., Over the next decade or so while she worked on her dissertation and then the book, Hobbs suffered her own series of losses as people close to her diedthe aunt who told her the story about the cousin and three first cousins who were like brothers and sisters to Hobbs. Following a tradition that goes back more than 120 years, Hobbs was elected by her classmates andwill play a number of ceremonial roles in celebration of their 25th reunion. Perhaps knowing that these memories live on in all of us makes the times gone by a little easier to bear. Hobbsis an associate professor in Stanford Universitys Department of History,director of African and African American studies,and a Kleinheinz University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. David Fulton, SB64, has owned some of historys most treasured violins, violas, and cellos. But for every Elsie there is a Robert Harlan, light-skinned, straight-haired, who showed no interest in renouncing his blackness. One of the best birthday presents anybody ever gave me was a calling card by the conceptual artist Adrian Piper. So most New Years Eve revellers just mumble or hum along. She wanted to stay in Chicago; she didnt want to give up all her friends and the only life shed ever known. But her mother was resolved. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Root.com, The Guardian, Politico, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. They would say, Well, I really dont know much about this relative or that relative. Or, I dont know that much about my fathers side because this person passed as white and we never heard from them again, Hobbs says. Stanford Historian Allyson Hobbs has written a history of racial passing in America, "A Chosen Exile." "There's probably a time when we all engaged in some form of passing," she said. She served on the jury for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile. Ad Choices. He remained close to the other Harlans, one of whom was Justice John Marshall Harlan the great dissenter of the Supreme Court who argued on behalf of equal rights under the law in Plessy v. Ferguson. She served on the jury for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. I think of my friends whose parents divorced when they were children or teenagers. A Chosen Exile grew out of Hobbss dissertation, and when she began her research, she says, at first it seemed like I wasnt going to get anywhere with it. I am in a small boat, too fatigued to pick up an oar, lost at sea. As she puts it, there is no essentialized, immutable or true identity . He remained close to the other Harlans but never tried to take on their whiteness. Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Stanford University. The authors father in 1943, at age three. Then one day, when their eldest son made an off-the-cuff comment about a black student at his boarding school, Albert blurted out, Well, youre colored. It was almost as if Albert had grown weary after 20 years of carefully guarding their secret. The arrival of these two ostensibly white women allowed Elsie to remain white, even in death, Hobbs writes. Though scholars have widely argued that Toomer passed as white, Hobbs depicts him as not so much rejecting blackness as rejecting racialized thinking. My father cant go back to the Chicago of the nineteen-fifties. Like A Chosen Exile, it also tells a story about identity, the uncomfortable territory of in-between, about leaving home and self behind and setting out into something unknown. Internal Mail Code: 2152 All rights reserved. You know, we have that in our own family too. That was the bombshell, the offhand remark that plunged historian Allyson Hobbs, AM02, PhD09, into a 12-year odyssey to understand racial passing in Americathe triumphs and possibilities, secrets and sorrows, of African Americans who crossed the color line and lived as white. Both of Hobbss parents came to Chicago as children during the Great Migration, her mother from New Orleans and her father from Augusta, Georgia. My sister died one year after my future husband and I graduated from college. Excerpt: Lost Kin (University of Chicago Magazine, MayJune/15). When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Her grandmother died just as she was finishing A Chosen Exile, but the stories stayed with her. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He saw race as superficial, a physical covering, and argued for an American identity that could not extricate its black elements from its white components. In this critically vigilant work, Hobbs refuses to accept any one identity as true. Toomer, in his resistance to being pigeonholed, comes across here as not so much self-loathing as ahead of his time. It tells a whole story about the highways and the ways that the creation of the highways destroyed a lot of black neighborhoods.. As her long-suffering mother puts it, How do you tell a child that she was born to be hurt?, To her credit, Hobbs isnt interested in reviving this tragic mulatto archetype. edited by Grossman, J. R., Keating, A. D., Reiff, L. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME), Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Office of VP for University Human Resources, Office of Vice President for Business Affairs and Chief Financial Officer, Graduate Research Seminar: U.S. History in the 20th Century, Graduate Research Seminar: U.S. History in the 20th Century Part II, Undergraduate Directed Research and Writing. And like her first book, it also began with ambient anecdotes and a family story. That story opens Hobbss book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), a lyrical, searching, and studious account of the phenomenon from the mid-19th century to the 1950s. Highlights from the week in culture, every Saturday. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Later, post-Reconstruction, people passed as white in order to go to work at better paying jobs, returning home to the black community at night in what Hobbs refers to as 9-to-5 passing., She also tells us about those who went white in more permanent ways, like Elsie Roxborough, an upper-class socialite who briefly dated Langston Hughes. Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth Century America explores the violence, humiliation, and indignities that African American motorists experienced on the road and To Tell the Terrible, which examines black womens testimonies against and collective memory of sexual violence. The Johnstons maintained the pretense for more than a decade, until one day in the early 1940s, when Albert Jr., home from boarding school, made an unthinking remark about a colored student there, and his father said, Well, youre colored.. Fierce in her conviction that the past has much to teach us, Allyson is an example of the countless Harvard alumni who are shaping our world, like all of the chief marshals before her.. It was fascinating how many of the students really struggled, she says. Long after I had fallen asleep, they would sit next to each other in recliners in front of the fireplace, drinking daiquiris and watching the latest family drama on HBO. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on ones own. The pride that I felt in joining the Class of 1997 had to do with what Harvard means as an institution, to its long history of prioritizing scholarship in the arts and sciences, and with the commitment to lifelong learning as central to the lives of its graduates.. But my mother wasnt joking. Ad Choices. The Root named A Chosen Exile among its Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014., 2023 Cond Nast. While the song absorbs my father, plates are cleared, dishes are washed, Uno cards are located, and new rules for the game are debated. Staggered by this nightmarish new reality, I am grasping for explanations for why my parents can no longer live together. Ellen Craft, a slave in Macon, Ga., successfully escaped to freedom in 1848 dressed as a white man, accompanied by her accomplice, her darker-skinned husband, who pretended to be her servant. Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of history and director of African and African-American studies at Stanford. Known as the peasant poet, Burns fathered at least a dozen children, with several women,and after leaving the farm he spent most of his career compiling traditional Scottish folk songs that celebrate life, love, work, drinking, and friendship, using warm melodies and emotional chords. The phrase Auld Lang Syne translates to times gone by, and, while Americans expect to hear this song every New Years, few know what the Scottish lyrics actually mean. I wonder if my parents marriage would have survived if my sister Sharon hadnt died from breast cancer at 31 in 1998. Ellen Craft, a slave in Macon, Ga., successfully escaped to freedom in 1848 dressed as a white man, accompanied by her accomplice, her darker-skinned husband, who pretended to be her servant . Obviously its a very different kind of loss, but passing is often equated with death, she says. After 60 years, my parents marriage is ending. An uncle who was an artist and spent long hours talking to Hobbs about the creative process. She plans to shed light on their journey by looking at the places where African Americans ate, slept, danced, where they stopped for gas or groceries or a hair cut or a bathroom break. And she says to her mother, I cant come home. But the cousin, of course, wasnt there. Would you like to recieve our weekly newsletter? A few years ago, my mom began to have impossible expectations of my father. The University of Chicago Magazine 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 Phone: 773.702.2163 Fax: 773.702.2166 uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu, The University of Chicago Magazine (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly by the University of Chicago in cooperation with the Alumni Association. I dont have to shuttle between two homes, I wont have to endure remarriages, I dont believe that I am at fault. Elsie changed her name to Mona Manet and wrote Hughes a letter bearing no return address stating that she intended to cease being colored. When she committed suicide years later, only her white-appearing relatives showed up to claim her body, allowing Elsie to remain white, even in death.. She takes nothing at face value least of all the idea that the person who is passing is actually and truly of one race or the other. Hobbs traveled to the school the summer before her senior year. Where were the sources going to be? It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. Ill remember my dad putting up the volleyball net in the backyard, securing the swing set and carrying home kids who had taken hard falls on the Slip N Slide. Her endless patience was wearing thin, her natural gentleness was hardening, and she seemed uncharacteristically annoyed. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. My fathers mother worked as a hairdresser. When a child dies before a parent, such a loss defies the expected order of life events, leading many people to experience the event as a challenge to basic existential assumptions, a 2010 study by the National Institutes of Health explained. . And the answer, of course, is no, the past must be remembered. Its a story weve of course read and seen before in fictional accounts numerous novels and films that have generally portrayed mixed-race characters in the sorriest of terms. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. Stanford, CA 94305-2024%20history-info [at] stanford.edu ()target="_blank"Campus Map, Understanding the past to prepare for the future, Ph.D., University of Chicago, History (2009), A.B., Harvard University, Social Studies (1997), Allyson Hobbs is an Associate Professor of United States History, the Director of African and African American Studies, and the Kleinheinz Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. One of the loved ones Hobbs lost helped spark her current book project, a study of the Great Migration through the experiences of travelers heading north through a segregated country. And surely youll buy your pint cup and surely Ill buy mine! Like so many of the people in her book, her own family tree has a gap. Hobbs chronicles those who passed as white at work in order to get better jobs and went home at night to black families in black neighborhoods. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne? I am an old man, he replied with a laugh. Perhaps his suffering and hardships imbued his poetry with its signature passion and intensity. She is a contributing writer to, and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. But I knew the sources were out there, because I knew there were stories like the one about this distant cousin of ours., Hobbs, who teaches American history at Stanford University, started by reading literature and going through the correspondence of Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, picking out the gossip they exchanged about themselves and their acquaintances passing for white. She also has taught classes on, Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program in History, Joint Degree in Law and History (J.D./Ph.D), Stanford Environmental and Climate History Workshop, Storytelling Matters to Historian Allyson Hobbs, Stanford Historian Re-examines Practice of Racial 'Passing, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, Obama and the Paradigm Shift: Measuring Change, Neo-Passing - Performing Identity after Jim Crow, Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America - Allyson Hobbs, How to Build a Movement - Featured: Clay Carson, Estelle Freedman, Allyson Hobbs and Pamela Karlan, Sunday Reading: Racial Injustice and the Police-Collection of Essays with 2016 Essay by Allyson Hobbs, Becoming, by Michelle Obama: A pioneering and important work by Allyson Hobbs. In letters, unpublished family histories, personal papers, sociological journals, court cases, anthropological archives, literature, and film, she finds a coherent and enduring narrative of loss.. Allyson Hobbs, an assistant professor of American history at Stanford University, discussed research from her award-winning book, A Chosen Exile: A History on Racial Passing in American Life, at a Women's Studies Colloquium. Those are the only fragments of that story that I have, Hobbs says. She is a contributing writer to. Fraziers dissertation, The Negro Family in Chicago, became a groundbreaking text in the field. It also tells a tale of loss. Her work has appeared in. Hobbs reckons with the trauma, alienation, and scarsnot only for those who passed, but also for those they left behind. She has served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in history and as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. I knew separate holidays would be unbearable, so I planned a holiday party that I rationalized as our familys Christmas. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. Listen to these stories, maybe you can imagine. My connection to Harvard is fundamental to who I am today, Hobbs said. Martins African American History textbook (2010 - 2010), Co-organizer, Globalizing Black History: IntellectualsConference, Stanford University (2010 - 2010), Faculty Sponsor, United States History Workshop for Graduate Students, Stanford University (2008 - Present), Faculty Advisor, ''Voices'' public service and social action organization of undergraduate African American women, Faculty Lecturer, Ernest Houston Johnson Scholars Program, Researcher, Black Metropolis Research Project Chicago, IL (2004 - 2007), Member, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Member, Immigration and Ethnic History Society, Member, Organization of American Historians, Member, Social Science History Association, Member, Southern Association of Women Historians, Member, Western Association of Women Historians, Member, Vivian Harsh Research Collection at Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago, IL, Ph.D., University of Chicago, History (2009), A.B., Harvard University, Social Studies (1997), AFRICAAM 54N, AMSTUD 54N, HISTORY 54N (Win), Violence in the Gilded Ages, Then and Now, HEAVEN COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY (Book Review). Joe Christmas, the tormented drifter in William Faulkners Light in August, considers his blackness evidence of original sin (a.k.a. As my mom, my sisters and I drifted off to sleep, hed croon: They said someday youll find/All who love are blind/Oh-oh when your hearts on fire/You must realize/Smoke gets in your eyes.. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth Century Americaexplores the violence, humiliation, and indignities that African American motorists experienced on the road andTo Tell the Terrible, which examines black womens testimonies against and collective memory of sexual violence. The book was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, a Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014 by The Root, a featured book in the New York Times Book Review Paperback Row in 2016, and a Paris Review What Our Writers are Reading This Summer Selection in 2017. And so the matter was decided. The Root named A Chosen Exile as one of the Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014., View details for DOI 10.1017/S1537781419000690, View details for Web of Science ID 000529084900011, View details for Web of Science ID 000431473400019, View details for Web of Science ID 000299143500019, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Stanford University (2008 - Present), AAAS/CCSRE Faculty Research Fellow, Stanford University (2014 - 2015), Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ford Foundation (2013 - 2014), Hoefer Faculty Mentor Prize, Stanford University (2013), Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, Stanford University (2013), The Graves Award, Humanities, Stanford University (2012), Clayman Institute for Gender Research Fellowship, Stanford University (2011 - 2012), Diversity Dissertation Fellowship Alternate, Ford Foundation (2011), CCSRE Junior Faculty Development Program, Stanford University (2010), Hoefer Faculty Mentor Prize, Stanford University (2010), St. Clair Drake Teaching Award, Stanford University (2010), Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Department of History, Stanford University (2007 - 2008), Diversity Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation (2007), Von Holst Prize, Lectureship in History, University of Chicago (2006), Trustee Fellowship, University of Chicago (2000 - 2006), Advisory Committee Member, African and African American Studies, Committe-in-Charge Member, American Studies Program, Core Affiliated Faculty, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Researcher, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Faculty Affiliate, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Faculty Advisor, Masters in Liberal Arts Program, Member, Transnational, International, and Global History Initiative, Department of History Urban Studies, Advisory Board, Spatial Legacy Academy, East Palo Alto, CA, Faculty Advisor, Mellon-Mays (2010 - Present), Pre-Major Advisor, Department of History, Stanford University (2010 - 2011), Expert Reviewer, Bedford/St. (Photography by Jennifer Pottheiser). I should be able to stanch the wound, but I cant. I wont go back. Stanford, CA 94305Phone:(650) 736-6790Fax:(650) 723-8528Campus Map, Ph.D., University of Chicago, with distinction B.A., Harvard University, magna cum laude, Allyson Hobbs is an Associate Professor of United States History, the Director of African and African American Studies, and the Kleinheinz Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. Allyson Hobbs is an Associate Professor of United States History, the Director of African and African American Studies, and the Kleinheinz Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. The car is cozy and my dad is singing again. Hobbss cousin was 18 when she was sent by her mother to live in Los Angeles and pass as a white woman in the late 1930s. Her sister had died from breast cancer when Hobbs was 22. An annual travelogue called The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide helped African Americans navigate their journeys with listings of tourist homes, hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barbershops, nightclubs, and service stations where they would be welcomed. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. It was a very unique place that began as a labor-organizing school and later became a center for civil rights and nonviolence activism that trained leaders and Civil Rights icons like Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, she said. The book was selected as a Times Book Review Editors Choice, a Best Book of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a Book of the Week by the Times Higher Education in London. She was also involved with the Association of Black Radcliffe Women, Harvard Arbitration Association,Harvard Black Register, First-Year Outdoor Program, intramural crew, Institute of Politics, and the Phillips Brooks House Association. It wasnt like I could go into a library and find a folder. What did she feel like when she hung up the phone? Hobbs asks. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Like gay characters, mulattoes always pay for their existence dearly in the end. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. Remember that, Joyce? he asks my mother. Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. Albert Johnston, SB25, MD29, and his wife Thyra passed as white so that he could practice medicine in a job that would have been unavailable to him as a black doctor. Lombardos band played Auld Lang Syne just as the clock struck midnight. Hobbs earned her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. But we can follow the poignant instructions offered in Auld Lang Syne: to remember the past, the stories, the scenes, the settings, the friendships, and the family. Hobbs said she felt deeply honored to be chosen, and called the Class of 1997 the most wonderful group of people Ive ever known. Certainly there is increasingly a language for mixed identity. One of his half brothers was Justice John Marshall Harlan, the Supreme Courts great dissenter, who made the lonely argument for equality of all citizens under the law in the landmark 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. Despite the tradition of activism by black women, white women have often played the protagonists in the history of sexual violence, and black women have been relegated to the supporting cast. Toomer argued eloquently for hybridity, but his idea never gained traction., Toomer failed to write anything of lasting impact after Cane. Indeed, Hobbs argues, in the postwar years, to pass as white was in many ways to choose mediocrity to sell ones birthright for a mess of pottage, as James Weldon Johnson put it at the end of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man., Hobbs tells the curious story of the upper-class black couple Albert and Thyra Johnston. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Lifehas beenselected as: Winner, Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for Best First Book in American History (Organization of American Historians), Winner, Lawrence Levine Prize for Best Book in American Cultural History (Organization of American Historians), ANew York TimesBook ReviewEditors Choice, 2017 Summer Reading Lists for The Paris Reviewand Harvard University Press, Recommended Reading on "Racial Boundaries" by theNew York Times, ASan Francisco ChronicleBest Book of 2014, ATimes Higher EducationBook of the Week, The Root, Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014, 450 Jane Stanford Way Chan School of Public Health celebrates opening of $25M Thich Nhat Hanh Center for research, approaches to mindfulness, Women who suppressed emotions had less diverse microbiomes in study that also found specific bacterial link to happiness, Tenn. lawmaker Justin Pearson, Parkland survivor David Hogg 23 talk about tighter gun control, GOP attempts to restrict voting rights, importance of local politics, Dangers involved in rise of neurotechnology that allows for tracking of thoughts, feelings examined at webinar, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? And with that Albert and Thyra began the journey toward blackness again. He is dressed in his finest clothes. Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth-Century America explores the humiliation and indignities as well as the joy, exhilaration, and freedom that African American motorists experienced on the road and To Tell the Terrible, which examines the collective memory of sexual violence among generations of black women. I cling to my sister and childhood friends who remember the past. Her work has appeared inThe New York Times,The New York Times Book Review,The Washington Post,The Nation,The Root.com,The Guardian,Politico,andThe Chronicle of Higher Education. Merrick Garland is the 86th attorney general of the United States. We read about the individuals who looked white but consciously chose not to pass who, when given the choice, opted for black life and community. Could a California Christmas with yards of garland, a lively rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and a signature Christmas cocktail substitute for our traditional New Jersey one? Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of American history and the director of African and African-American studies at Stanford University. This collaboration never fails to fill me with joy., She called writing her thesis about the Highlander Folk School, nestled in the mountains of Tennessee, transformative. Traveling from New Orleans to Nashville, she found that most of the places listed in the guide no longer exist. "Storytelling Matters to Historian Allyson Hobbs,"The Stanford Dish, February 19, 2016, "Stanford Historian Re-examines Practice of Racial 'Passing,'"Stanford Report, December 18, 2013. Stanford University, Main Quad Its lacerations came without warning. It was kind of this obsession or intrigue with them, she says. From left: a portrait; Jean Toomer Papers: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; The Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library. The labor that the farm required seemed to leave Burns with a heart condition that afflicted him later in life.
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