Light-skinned-ed Girl

Storycorps Interview on KPCC!

I was excited to hear that a snippet of my Storycorps interview with my friend Fanshen ran on KPCC.  I'm the interviewer this time!  Check it out here.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: 2011 Wrap-up

Dude!  This year's Mixed Experience History Month just about took me out!  I had the most difficult time finding the information about some of my subject's backgrounds.  But there were some real winners and very new to me including the awesome Japanese American Black Panther Richard Aoki.

I may have gone overboard in highlighting the Afro-Vikings this year, but I found it so fascinating to discover so many more including artist Camille Pissarro.  That is still blowing my mind!

I realized only now that I only included two women in my profiles.  It is a function of 1) not paying attention as I went along, but 2) there is a dearth of information on women's history still!  I will make a best effort to include more women next year.

So I need your help for next year.  Please send me your recommendations for 2012: remember, profiles are limited to non-living notables, but not limited to mixed-race individuals (see Richard Aoki as example).  I look forward to hearing from you.  Thanks again for celebrating Mixed Experience History Month with me!

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Ed Thigpen, Jazz Drummer

Ed Thigpen was an American jazz drummer born in 1930.

At 18, Thigpen became a professional musician.  In 1950, he joined Cootie Williams' band at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.  He was drafted in 1952 and served in the US Army in Korea and Japan.  After his military service, he joined Dina Washington's trio.  Known as "Mr. Taste," he went on to become a fixture in New York's vibrant jazz scene.

In 1959, he realized a dream to play with the Oscar Peterson Trio.  From the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, Thigpen accompanied Ella Fitzgerald's trio and also played as a freelancer in Hollywood for legends such as Johnny Mathis. 

Thigpen moved permanently to Denmark in 1974.  He worked with expatriate musicians such as Ernie Wilkins, and Danish jazz artists like Niels-henning Oersted Pedersen. 

Thigpen died in 2010 and is buried in Vestre Kirkegaard in Copenhagen.  He is survived by his two kids from his second marriage to a Danish woman.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History: Jim Beckwourth, Adventurer

James Beckwourth was born around 1800, the son of a white Virginia aristocrat and a mixed-race enslaved woman.

Beckwourth served as an apprentice blacksmith as a young man.  In 1822, his father manumitted him so that he could travel west and work in the fur trade.

According to Beckwourth in his memoir, he was captured by the Crow Indians who believed him to be the lost son of a Crow chief.  Beckworth spent many years living with the Crow Indians and was named an honorary chief.

In the mid-1930s he worked as a fur trader for the American Fur Company.  Thereafter, he worked various jobs in the military -- first in Florida and then again in the west.

He is known for blazing the Beckwourth Trail--the easier trail used by those headed to California during the Gold Rush.

Beckwourth spent the last years of his life with the Crow Indians.  He died in 1866.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Garrett Augustus Morgan, inventor

Garrett Augustus Morgan was born in either 1875 or 1877 in Paris, Kentucky.  He was the son of formerly enslaved parents.  His mother was African-American and Native American.  His father was also mixed-race.

At 14, Morgan, who had a fascination with mechanical things, left home and worked as a handyman in Cleveland for six years

Morgan sold his first invention--a sewing maching belt fastener--in 1901.

In 1907, he opened his own sewing machine sales and repair shop.  He married seamstress Mary Anne Hassk in 1908 and they had three sons.  In 1909, Morgan established a clothes manufacturing plant.

Quite by accident--as he was testing the flammability of a fabric in the fast-moving sewing machines--he created a conconction that could straighten curly hair.  His first test of the product was on the neighbor's dog and then himself.  It worked.  Morgan established the Morgan Hair Refining Company in 1913 and sold his hair care line for hair straightening.

In 1912, as a result of his desire to help firefighters, Morgan created the first prototyype of a gas mask that could provide 20 minutes of clean air.  By 1917, Morgan had perfected his design and it was used widely in World War I.

Morgan also invented the precursor to the modern-day traffic light for which he was granted a patent in 1923.  He sold the patent to General Electric for $40,000.

Morgan was also a dedicated civic leader and became a publisher of a weekly black newspaper.

He died in 1963, having lost his sight from the gas mask testing he did.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Robert Wedderburn, abolitionist & activist

Born in 1762 in Jamaica, Robert Wedderburn was the son of a Scottish sugar plantation owner and an enslaved black woman.  Wedderburn's father sold his mother to another slave holder while she was pregnant with the stipulation that upon his birth Robert would be free.

Wedderburn left the plantation to become a sailor when he came of age.  In 1778, he traveled to England and became a tailor.

In 1812, Wedderburn essentially began a tutelage to Thomas Spence, a radical reformer.  Upon Spence's death, Wedderburn became a leader of the disciples who pledged to advance Spence's ideals.  He also started his own Unitarian church.

Wedderburn was arrested several times for his radical remarks.  He was charged with blasphemous libel when he advocated a simultaneous revolution of the European poor and the enslaved blacks in the West Indies.

In 1824, he published The Horros of Slavery, and spent the rest of his life championing free speech.  The date of his death is unknown.  Wedderburn is considered to be instrumental in achieveing freedom of the press in 19th century Britain.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

Monday Morning Mixed Links

A few links on the Mixed experience for a Monday morning:

• Who is a Black Actor? Vin Diesel?  The Rock?  Rashida Jones?  And does it matter?
• Danzy Senna's new book, You Are Free, gets a great review in the New York Times.
• A Mixed Name for a Mixed Kid?  An essay on choosing a name for a newborn who is multiracial.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Francis James Grimke, Minister & Activist

Francis James Grimke was born in 1850, the son of a white man and an enslaved black woman.  When Grimke's father died, Grimke ran away because his white half-brother claimed his "ownership rights" over him. 

Grimke became an officer's valet in the Confederate Army.  When the war ended, his paternal aunts funded his college studies at Lincoln University. 

In 1870, he graduated at the top of his class.  In 1878, he received a degree from Princeton's Theological Seminary.

Grimke began his ministry in DC at the 15th Street Presbyterian Church.  He married poet and abolitionist Charlotte Forten in 1878; they had a child together that died in infancy.

Grimke was known for his ardent and vocal stand for civil rights.  He denounced African-Americans who called for conservatism.  In a 1898 speech he said:

"The sentiment everywhere is: This is a white man's government. And that means, not only that the whites shall rule, but that the Negro shall have nothing whatever to do with governmental affairs. If he dares to think otherwise, or aspires to cast a ballot, or to become anything more than a servant, he is regarded as an impudent and dangerous Negro; and according to the most recent declarations of that old slave holding and lawless spirit, all such Negroes are to be driven out of the South, or compelled by force, by what is known as the shot gun policy, to renounce their rights as men and as American citizens. This is certainly a very discouraging condition of things, but the saddest aspect of it all is that there are members of our race and not the ignorant, unthinking masses, who have had no advantages, and who might be excused for any seeming insensibility to their rights, but the intelligent, the educated who are found condoning such offenses, justifying or excusing such a condition of things on the ground that in view of the great disparity in the condition of the two races, anything different from that could not reasonably be expected."

Grimke was active in the Niagara movement and peripherally helped found the NAACP.  Grimke died in 1937.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Jean Toomer, writer

Jean Toomer, born in 1894 in Washington D.C., became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance best known for his book, Cane.

The son of two mixed-race parents, Toomer had a peripatetic upbringing and continued to move around to different universities as a young man studying agriculture, physical education, psychology, and literature.

In 1918, Toomer started writing short stories.  In 1921, he traveled to the South for a teaching job.  His time there sparked his imagination and resulted in his high modern, lyrical book Cane published in 1923. He continued to write but no other of his writing has had such a profound impact on literature.

There is currently much controversy about whether Toomer decided to "pass for white" in his later adulthood.  See also Marcia Dawkins' response to the new assertions. 

Of his heritage, Toomer wrote: "Racially, I seem to have (who knows for sure) seven blood mixtures: French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish, and Indian. Because of these, my position in America has been a curious one. I have lived equally amid the two race groups. Now white, now colored. From my own point of view I am naturally and inevitably an American."

Toomer died in 1967.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

5th Annual Mixed Experience History Month: Sacagawea, Guide & Interpreter

Sacagawea was a Shoshone born in 1788.  At 12-years-old, she was kidnapped by members of the Hidatsa tribe.

As a young teen, she was married to French trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau.  She was already pregnant when Lewis & Clark engaged her and Charbonneau as interpreters and guides for their expedition.  Her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was born in February 1805.  As a young mother, Sacagawea traveled thousands of miles on the expedition and proved a valuable interpreter to Lewis & Clark.

Sacagawea and her husband settled in St. Louis after the Lewis & Clark expedition and entrusted the education of their son to Clark.  It is believed that Sacagawea died in 1812 though others argue that she lived into old age and died in 1884.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.