Light-skinned-ed Girl

May 31, 2013

The adventuring begins today!

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: A Recap

Well, we've come to the end of Mixed Experience History Month for 2013.  I hope that you've enjoyed the profiles and stories about the diverse and long past of folks in the Mixed experience.  This year's profiles included a number of people with Native American heritage which was wonderful to learn about.  In my own family we claim at least one Cherokee ancestor on my father's side, but all we have is a picture and no stories.  Some of the stories that have really fascinated me were the stories of the performers: Mance Lipscomb, Illinois Jacquet, Manuel and Johnny Woodson.  I started to wonder whether there is something inherent about growing up in the Mixed experience that draws one to performing or to the arts?  I'd say yes in my own life.  I grew up knowing that other people's "math" about me didn't add up: I wasn't half this or half that--I was a whole me with what might be considered a more complicated experience with two cultures and two languages at home.  Making myself "seen" on stage and on the page meant something in particular to me.

I think I have more than a 100 profiles in this yearly series--and it's getting more and more difficult to find new people to profile--not because there weren't a lot of accomplished folks in the Mixed experience but because the stories have been erased.  So a plea: if you have ideas for me please send them along--the only requirement is that the person must be deceased -- this is history after all! 

Thanks again for tuning in as always.  Thanks also to the wonderful Zerflin!  My go-to graphic design firm and really good peeps.  Zerflin designed the logo which features the amazing painter William H. Johnson.  (If you need a graphic designer, please check them out!)

 

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Julien Hudson, painter

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Ina Ray Hutton, Band Leader

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Abbie Mitchell, soprano

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Bessie Coleman, aviator

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Johnny Woodson, circus performer

Johnny Woodson was born Feb. 10, 1864 in St. Louis, MO. He was the son of two registered free persons of color. His mother was described as mulatto. Woodson began his performing career as a clog dancer and minstrel. He went on to perform with Callender's Consolidated Colored Minstrels. He performed with the great entertainers of color of his time: Billy Kersands, Wallace King, Bill Banks and Dick Little. Woodson moved to Europe in 1883 and there is no record he returned to the U.S. He was the older brother of Manuel Woodson whom he performed with in Europe, at first in Germany and then in France. Woodson would become known as one of the best acrobats on horseback. He did a highly difficult act called the infernal voltage. It is said that he had an accident during his act and died disabled. The date of his death is unknown.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: James Alan Bland, composer

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Jeanne Duval, performer & muse

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Manuel Woodson, contortionist extraordinaire

Emanuel (Manuel) Woodson was born Nov. 1, 1865, the son of a registered freeman of color and a mother who was described as mulatto in St. Louis, MO. The Woodson family was a talented family of performers. At least two of Woodson's siblings became professional performers as young adults: a sister who played piano and a brother who was a revered clog dancer, minstrel and ultimately, circus performer.

Woodson's career began in the U.S. as a performer with a minstrel troupe. In 1883, he traveled to Europe to perform. He became well known at French and German circus venues. It wasn't until after he married Olga Brown, a celebrated trapeze artist and strongwoman, he became a main draw as a celebrated contortionist also known as Blitzmensch. Woodson continued to perform into the early 1900s. He then settled in Brussels with his wife and daughter and served as the stage manager of the Palais d'Ete. He died in 1915 of liver disease in Brussels where he is buried. In an obituary, one theatre critic noted: "In walking about with Mr. Woodson, we could not help but notice that he was a highly respected citizen in the Belgian capital."

Woodson is the inspiration for a character in the new book I’m working on about his wife, Miss Lala, who was immoratilized by Degas in Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: James Alan Bland, composer

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Etta James, singer extraordinaire

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Mance Lipscomb, Blues Great

Mance Lipscomb was born April 9, 1895 in Texas. His father was African-American and had been enslaved. His mother was mixed-race: African-American and Choctaw. He took the name Mance from a family friend. "Mance" was short for "emancipation." When he was 14, his mother bought him his first guitar. Lipscomb spent his life as a sharecropper. It wasn't until he was "discovered" and recorded by two white musicologists that he was heralded as a musician. He released several blues albums after that. The story of his life is captured in "Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscom, Texas Bluesman, narrated to Glen Alyn" which was published posthumously. "A Well Spent Life," a short Oscar-nominated documentary, also focuses on his life. Lipscomb became an important figure in the folk music revival of the 1960s influencing Dylan and Janis Joplin among others. He died in January 1976.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: George Herriman, cartoonist

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Abbie Mitchell, soprano

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Jeanne Duval, performer & muse

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: A Recap

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Ina Ray Hutton, Band Leader

Lipscomb

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Illinois Jacquet, Tenor Saxophonist

Illinois Jacquet was born Oct. 31, 1922. His mother was Sioux and his father was Creole. Raised in Texas with 5 siblings, Jacquet was performing as a child in his father's band along with 2 of his brothers as a saxophonist. After playing with a professional dance band at 15, he moved to LA where he met Nat King Cole. Cole introduced Jacquet to Lionel Hampton. At Hampton's request, Cole switched to tenor saxophone and joined Hampton's band. He was just 19 when he soloed on "Flying Home" in 1940. The song was an instant hit and now a classic. In 1943, he joined Cab Calloway's Orchestra. A year later he returned to California and started a band with his brother and Charles Mingus. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Jacquet performed mostly in Europe. In 1981, he became the leader of the Illinois Jacquet Big Band.  In 1983, he was the first jazz musician to serve as an artist in residence at Harvard. In 1993, he played with Bill Clinton on the White House lawn for the inaugural ball. Jacquet died in 2004 of a heart attack.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

was the first jazz musician to serve as an artist in residence at Harvard. In 1993, he played with Bill Clinton on the White House lawn for the inaugural ball. Jacquet died in 2004 of a heart attack.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Educator & Activist

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Ina Ray Hutton, Band Leader

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Pompey Factor, Decorated Army Scout

Born in 1849, Pompey Factor was a Black Seminole. His family fled to Mexico in the 1850s featuring enslavement after the Second Seminole War. He lived in Mexico until 1870 when he was recruited to serve as a US Army scout. In 1875, Factor and two other scouts saved their commander during a skirmish with the Comanche. He and the other scouts received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery. In 1877, Factor returned to Mexico because of the rising tensions between black Seminole and white settlers in Texas. He worked with the scouts in 1879, but left for Mexico again in 1880. In 1926, he returned to Texas and died in 1928. He is buried in Bracketville, Texas in the Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Related articles

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Julien Hudson, painter

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Solomon Northup, Abolitionist & Author

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Billy Bowlegs III, tribal historian

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: George Bonga, Explorer & Activist

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: William P. Powell, Civil War Surgeon

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Orindatus Wall, soldier & activist

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: George Bonga, Explorer & Activist

Born in 1802 near Duluth, MN, George Bonga was the son of an African-American father and Ojibwe mother.  Bonga attended school in Montreal and spoke English, French and Ojibwe fluently.  He was quoted as saying that he was the "first black man born in this part of the country" and one of the "first two white men that came into this country."

He was one of only 14 African-Ameriacans in the 1850 Minnesota Territory Census.  But as an Ojibwe, he could be classified as Indian.

Bonga was from a long line of fur traders and explorers.  In the 1820s, he worked for the American Fur Company, and in the
1830s traded at various Minnesota posts.  Bonga's strength was legendary with his Paul Bunyan-esque stature at 6 feet 6 inches.  He was also known as a gifted singer and storyteller.

Bonga's name became known through the territory when he captured an accused murderer.  His extraordinary trackign ability and capture of the accused led to Minnesota's first criminal trial.  When the fur trade came to an end, Bonga opened tourist lodges to support his family.  He was an outspoken advocate for the Ojibwe in his later years too.

He was an official witness to the treaty signing that created the White Earth Indian Reservation in 1867.

In 1884, Bonga died.  His death was mentioned in newspapers across the country and noted by the U.S. Congress.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: William P. Powell, Civil War Surgeon

Born in 1834, William P. Powell was the son of a free black man and a Native American mother in Bedford, MA. 

Powell, Sr. was a vocal abolitionist and helped house black seamen as well as fugitive slaves.  In 1851, the family moved to England to escape the punitive and rightfully frightening Fugitive Slave laws.  Powell, Jr. grew up in Liverpool where his father ran a boarding house for seamen and newly arrived fugitive slaves.  Powell, Jr. did medical training at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in London.  His family returned to America in 1861 and he began practicing medicine then.

Powell wanted to help in the war effort and applied to the Army to serve as an assistant surgeon.  He was offered a contract and worked at the Contraband Hospital for fugitive slaves and black soldiers.  In 1863, he became the hospital's surgeon-in-chief and served for a year.

He left the Army and went into private practice.  He retired in 1891 in failing health.  He spent the next 24 years petitioning for his government pension. He never received it as he could not prove that he was a commissioned military man rather than a contracted surgeon.

In 1902, he returned to England where his brother was in ill health.  He died there in 1915 in a home for the aged and invalid.

NOTE: This is the fascinating source you can learn more about William Powell's story:  National Library of Medicine exhibition and online exhibition.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is my effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.

Mixed Experience History Month 2013: Billy Bowlegs III, tribal historian

Billy Bowlegs III was born in 1862. His father was African-American and his mother was Seminole.  He took the name Billy Bowlegs as an adult after the great Seminole chief who led his people through the Seminole Wars. 

Bowlegs befriended a couple of amateur historians who became advocates for the Seminole.  It was with his help they published The Seminole of Florida in 1896.  The couple later advocated on the tribe's behalf to gain a reservation in the Everglades.

He died in 1965.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is my effort to highlight the long history of folks and events 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, 2011, 2013. Copyright 2013.