Light-skinned-ed Girl

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.

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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.

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Mixed Experience History Month 2012: James Alan Bland, composer

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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.

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Mixed Experience History Month 2012: George Herriman, cartoonist

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Abbie Mitchell, soprano

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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.

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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.

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May is Mixed Experience History Month 2013

It's May and that means it's Mixed Experience History Month, a month-long celebration of people and events that have shaped the Mixed experience.  I founded this celebration in 2007 with the hope of bringing awareness to the long history of racial and cultural connectedness.  I had become frustrated with the idea that my discussions of "mixed-ness" was for a small niche-group and set out to show that the Mixed experience is the American experience--that we're all part of this larger story.

In the last three years as I've traveled across the country with my book, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, I have been most heartened by the fact that my book hasn't just found a foothold in multiracial literature studies or just found an audience with multiracial indviduals and blended families, it has found a place in the mainstream.  People of all stripes and polka dots have related to the story and found a way to articulate, claim and explore their own mixed roots and connections.  I hope that is true for this project too.

Starting next week I will post a new profile of a person or event in the Mixed experience each weekday of the month.  If you have nominations for inclusion, please leave a comment below. 

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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.

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Mixed Experience History Month 2012: James Monroe Trotter, soldier & music historian

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Mixed Experience History Month 2012: George Herriman, cartoonist

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

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Etta James, singer extraordinaire

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Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Paschal Beverly Randolph, Spiritualist & Sex Magician

Roots, Race, and My Dad: My Newest Huffington Post Essay

I've done a lot of writing about my dad over the last 20 years since he died, but have kept much of it private.  I wrote this essay for a news organization but ultimately it didn't fit the series.  But I was happy with the balance in the piece, as well as the small measure of peace I found in writing it.  I hope you will take a read over at the Huffington Post: My Father's Silence, A Kind of Grace.

2nd Annual What Are You? Presentation, Brooklyn Historical Society 10/4 7PM

Join me for this great panel discussion: 2nd Annual: What Are You?  Let’s talk about race and ethnicity, and where we’re from (or where we’re from from); how we express our own multicultural identities, and how others perceive us. Panelists will start the conversation and we hope you’ll join in. We’ll discuss big questions like: How does our cultural background shape us? Can we see race? Is identity fixed or fluid? #CBBGwhatru Featuring: Jen Chau, founder of Swirl Erica Chito Childs, author of Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture, Heidi Durrow, a host of Mixed Chicks Chat and author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day, Angela Tucker, director of Black Folk Don't. Co-sponsored by Swirl, a multi-ethnic, anti-racist organization that promotes cross-cultural dialogue. Brooklyn Brewery beer and light refreshments will be served. RSVP: http://cbbgwhatru.eventbrite.com/

The Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street at Clinton Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: A Recap

It has been a long month for me--not just the number of weekdays I needed to post for Mixed Experience History Month, but also the amount of time I needed to spend researching and writing each post.

Each year, I find it more and more difficult to learn enough about the biographies of the historical figures to have it make sense to include them.  This year, I was disappointed with the lack of diversity of the profiled figures' ancestral roots.  Many of the profiled figures have some African-American or African ancestry--as strange as it is to say: I found it easiest to learn more about their origins and their relationship to the Mixed experience.

I also found it interesting to profile someone like architect Louis Metoyer who was also a slave owner.  Do I want him as part of the history I own ultimately?  What I decided is that stories and particularly history is complicated.  I claimed him too.

But what a thrill it was to claim writer Audre Lorde whose mother was mixed race and who had a number of interracial relationships.  I have felt a kinship to Audre Lorde since I first read her words about claiming one's complicated identity.  She spoke specifically about her own identity of being a black lesbian, but she was also speaking about mine as an Afro-Viking.  And to claim Etta James too?  Well, I had to.  I miss her!

I would really like to write a longer, more well-researched piece at some point about the ways in which light-skinned privilege helped these figures become who they were--and how that privilege might have factored into their own psychological imagining of themselves and their possibilities.

And finally, for next year's celebration I hope that I will be able to uncover more about what the profiled figures think about their position in the "Mixed experience"--what, if anything, did it mean to them?  And what was it allowed to mean to them.

I hope you've enjoyed the posts.  I will go back to my regular blogging about my mixed thoughts on a mixed up world, the creative life, books, and travel!  I hope you'll stay tuned.

BTW: The lady in this year's Mixed Experience History badge (designed by the wonderful Zerflin) is my literary mother, Nella Larsen

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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 highlight the long history of folks 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. Copyright 2012.

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: Audre Lorde, writer & activist

Born in 1934 in New York City, Audre Lorde was the daughter of Carribbean immigrants.  Her mother, of mixed-race ancestry, found pride in that she was fair enough to pass for white.  Lorde's father had a browner complexion.

Lorde was nearsighted to the point of being legally blind.  Still, she excelled in school.  After graduating from high school, Lorde became estranged from her family.  She went on to study at Hunter College. 

In 1954, during a pivotal year abroad in Mexico, Lorde came out as a lesbian poet.

After graduating from college, Lorde earned a master's in Library Science in 1961 from Columbia.

Soon thereafter she married a lawyer with whom she had two children.  The marriage ended in divorce in 1970.  During this time, Lorde worked as a librarian and was actively publishing her poetry and working for civil rights causes.  She was also an educator.

She published her first volume of poems in 1968: First Cities.  She published several more collections including: From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), Coal (1976), The Black Unicorn (1978), and Our Dead Behind Us (1986). She also published two memoirs: The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988). In 1982, Lorde's published her novel Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.

Lorde's work and writing focused on the necessity of claiming all of one's complicated identity, and brought new voice to issues of race, sexuality and culture. She once wrote: “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

She received many awards during her lifetime including a nomination for a National Book Award in 1974 for From a Land Where Other People Live, Broadside Poets Award, Detroit, 1975, Borough of Manhattan President's Award for literary excellence, 1987, and the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, poet laureate of New York, 1991 among others.

Lorde died in 1992 of cancer.  She chronicled her bout with the disease in her writing in The Cancer Journals.

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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 highlight the long history of folks 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. Copyright 2012.