Light-skinned-ed Girl

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Kick off!

It's May and so our celebration of Mixed Experience History Month begins! I established Mixed Experience History Month in 2007 on my personal blog Light-skinned-ed Girl as a way of claiming a history and a voice that I felt had been denied me. Part of the difficulty of claiming one's identity in the Mixed experience is that we have no history.  Our stories have been written out of the texts to conform to what society has allowed us to say about our racial identities.  And usually that has either silenced our experience and/or simplified them. It's easy to celebrate Mixed Experience History Month!  Just follow along with the posts I'll make each weekday in May profiling historical figures and events that relate to the Mixed experience.  This year I will be posting the blog profiles on my website The Mixed Experience in their entirety and in part on my personal blog with a click through link. If you have ideas of people I should profile please email me at heidi(at)heidiwdurrow.com.  And remember this is history so I'm only looking for people to profile who have passed away!  P.S. Anybody know who this year's badge features?--Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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 archived 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, 2012,  2013, 2014.  

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Re-Cap

Thanks so much for reading this year's posts and profiles.  

It's been a fun year for research.  I learned a lot and I hope you did too!  What were some of your favorite profiles?  

See you again next year and remember please keep spreading the word!--Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

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Mixed Experience History Month 2013: A Recap

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Yung Wing, pioneering educator

Yung Wing (1828-1912) was the first Chinese person to graduate from an American college.  

Wing was born in southern China in 1828.  He was the son of poor farmers who decided to send him to a missionary school to improve his life's prospects.

Wing was sponsored by an American missionary who operated schools in China to come to America to study.

Wing graduated from Yale in 1854 and returned to China.  He had difficulty securing employment for some time.  In 1872, he helped from the Chinese Education Mission that allowed Chinese students to study in the U.S.  

Wing married a white American woman in 1875 with whom he had two children. 

In all, the Chinese Education Mission allowed 120 Chinese students to travel to and study in the U.S.  The program lasted 9 years.

 Wing had to flee China when a coup brought the Empress Dowager CiXi to power.  His U.S. citizenship had been revoked but he managed to sneak back into the country.  He died penniless and is buried in a Connecticut graveyard.--Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Charles Chestnutt, writer & activist

Charles Chestnutt (1858-1932) was an accomplished writer and important civil rights activist.

Chestnutt was born in Ohio.  His parents were "free persons of color."  Chestnutt could easily pass as white.  However, he identified as black and noted that he was 7/8ths white.

At age 9, Chestnutt's family moved to North Carolina.  He studied to become a teacher and eventually became the assistant principal at a school that trained black students to become teachers.

In 1878, Chestnutt married.  The couple moved to Ohio where Chestnutt studied law.  He made a good living from the court reporting business he established.

On the side he wrote fiction and published his first short story in 1887 in The Atlantic Monthly. 

Chestnutt published two short story collections (The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line) before publishing his first novel, The House Behind the Cedars in 1900. 

He continued to write and publish but his books were not commercially successful.  In 1928, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal for lifetime achievement.  He died in 1932.

 

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: John Richard Archer, politician

John Richard Archer (1863-1932) was a mixed-race British politician and first black mayor in London.

He was the son of Richard Archer, a black man from Barbados and Mary Burns, a white Irish woman.

Archer was in the merchant navy and travelled extensively.  He married a black Canadian woman and eventually settled in Battersea in Britain.

Archer was variously described as a singer, medical student and eventually as a political activist, and photographer.

He started speaking publicly some time after 1900--speaking against spiritualism and for the civil rights of blacks.  He served in a variety of elected posts and in 1913 was elected as Mayor of Battersea as a Progressive.  He went on to serve as alderman later.  And in 1931, he returned to the Council. He died suddenly in 1931.-Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, writer & journalist

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) who became known as Koizumi Yakumo was a writer who is best known for his books about Japan.

Yakumo was born to an Irish father and Greek mother in Greece.  The family moved to Ireland when he was 2.  As a teenager, an accident left him with vision in only one eye.

At 19, he immigrated to the United States.  He became a respected journalist and wrote for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer.  When it was discovered he had married a black woman--which was illegal at the time--he was fired.  The couple divorced in 1877.

From 1877 to 1887, Hearn lived in New Orleans and wrote about Creole culture and voodoo practices and other things specific to the area.

From 1887 to 1889, he lived on Martinique and wrote two books about the French West Indies.  In 1890, Hearn went to Japan where he would live the rest of his life.

He married a Japanese woman with whom he had four children. In 1896, he took the name Koizumi Yakumo and became a naturalized citizen.

He taught English and English literature and wrote about Japanese folk life.  He died in 1904 of heart failure.--Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: James Mye

James Mye (ca. 1823 - ca. 1890) was a descendant of Africans who escaped slavery in the British colonies and found refuge in Native American communities.  He was of Mashpee and African descent.  Mye was an indentured servant to the Hall brothers beginning at age 11.  However, in a 1804 legal case that became an important precedent in subsequent cases concerning child labor, the court determined that his servitude was akin to slavery and not legal.  This daguerrotype of Mye was taken circa 1840 in Cape Cod.--Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg historian & writer

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938) was a historian and writer and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

He was born in Puerto Rico--the son of a freeborn black woman from St. Croix and a white German merchant.  He was educated at St. Thomas College in the then Danish-ruled Virgin Islands.

Schomburg moved to New York City in 1891.  He was a staunch advocate of Puerto Rico's independence from Spain and called himself "Afroborinqueno."

Schomburg worked as a teacher, and a law firm clerk among other things.  He wrote on the side and began publishing academic histories and pamphlets.

In 1911, Schomburg founded with John Edward Bruce the Negro Society for Historical Research.  In 1916, he published a Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry.  In 1927, the New York Public Library bought Schomburg's book and art collection.  Schomburg became the curator of the collection and a library was named in his honor.  Schomubrg also helped curate the collection of Fisk University.

In 1938, Schomburg died suddenly after having dental surgery.  He was survived by his second wife, and three children from his first marriage and two from his second.--Heidi Durrow

 

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: Mary White Ovington, a founder of the NAACP

Mary White Ovington (1865-1951) wasa  co-founder of the NAACP and a journalist.

She was the daughter of progressive white parents.  Her involvement with social justice issues was sparked by a Frederick Douglass speech she attended.

Ovington helped to create the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn and led it for a decade.  Her next job was as a fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations which studied employment and housing problems of African-Americans.

She wrote for several liberal publications, and would go on to publish several academic books and an anthology for children.

In 1909, Ovington helped spark the movement that led to the formation of the National Negro Committee.  At the Committee's second conference in 1910, the NAACP was organized and Ovington became its executive secretary.

Ovington was active with the NAACP for the next 38 years and was an outspoken advocate for racial justice.  She served on the Board until 1947. She died in 1951.--Heidi Durrow

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.

 

Mixed Experience History Month 2014: 1st Black Major League Baseball Player But "Played" as White

William Edward White (1860-1937) was Major League Baseball's first black player but passed as white at the time.

White was the son of a white Georgia businessman, Andrew Jackson White, and a mixed-race enslaved woman, Hannah.  He was one of three chlidren the couple had.  They lived together as a family.

White played only one game with the National League's Providence Grays on June 21, 1879 when he was a 19-year-old student at Brown.  The Grays won the game 5-3 with White scoring 1 run.  It's unknown why he never played another professional game. 

White went on to marry a white woman in Chicago with whom he had 3 children.  

White seemed to have had a serious setback in his later years.  Separated from his wife, he was reportedly living in a flophouse in his final years.  He died in 1937 of blood poisoning after breaking his arm from a slip on an icy sidewalk.

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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The 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, 2012,  2013. Copyright 2014.