Passing: On crossing the color line - CBS News Alumni will be able to reconnect in person for Harvard Alumni Day, reunions, and other alumni programs across the campus, after the pandemic kept many from visiting for two consecutive years. I drift into my own misty reveries: a childhood when the excitement of Christmas would not let me sleep; years later, watching my brother-in-law assemble elaborate and exquisite floral centerpieces as his generous gift to us; the games played; the joy and laughter before my sisters illness and untimely death, at thirty-one; even the hectic but happy balancing act of celebrating two Christmasesone with my family and one with my husbands familybefore our marriage collapsed, four years ago. 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. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. Allyson Hobbs, AM02, PhD09. A Chosen Exile has been featured on All Things Considered on National Public Radio, Book TV on C-SPAN, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show on MSNBC, the Tavis Smiley Show on Public Radio International, the Madison Show on SiriusXM, and TV News One with Roland Martin. 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. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. And in many ways, it is.. I thought, Ive really got to write about the people who were left behind, she says. Her grandmother died just as she was finishing A Chosen Exile, but the stories stayed with her. 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. It is to feel like an embodiment of W. E. B. All rights reserved. I didnt have the time or the instinct to soften or parry the blow. I wish I could hear the sounds of the crackling radio and join him, my aunt, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother around the dining table or next to the frosted Christmas tree. Hobbs also describes the upper-class Johnston family, who in the early 1900s became stalwarts of social and civic life in an all-white New Hampshire town. . I am undone, untethered, dysfunctional. They seemed to grow even closer as our once large family became smaller and summer family reunions petered out. Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (191095) illuminated stellar evolution. She served on the jury for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History. 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. Relatives whod passed as white and vanished from the family left wide gaps in the family tree. Traveling from New Orleans to Nashville, she found that most of the places listed in the guide no longer exist. 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. 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. His life was not an easy one. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. 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. 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. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. All rights reserved. I knew separate holidays would be unbearable, so I planned a holiday party that I rationalized as our familys Christmas. 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. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. And our cousinand this was the part of the story that my aunt really underscoredwas that our cousin absolutely did not want to do this, Hobbs says. And like her first book, it also began with ambient anecdotes and a family story. My father cant go back to the Chicago of the nineteen-fifties. The moment when I was handed the keys to Highlanders archive was the moment when I knew I wanted to be a historian., Hobbs was extremely active outside the classroom as well, including participating in the Crimson Key Society and the First-Year Outdoor Program. Ill remember my bright pink bedroom with curtains that my mom made from Benetton sheets. . And well take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne. 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 anticipated the punch lines of jokes that they already knew, sometimes bursting into laughter before the joke was complete. Obviously its a very different kind of loss, but passing is often equated with death, she says. And the answer, of course, is no, the past must be remembered. 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. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to pass out and embrace a black identity. Her first book, "A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial . 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. My fathers grandmother had served the white folks at dinner parties, so she took great pride in making her own celebrations equally special. One of the difficulties in writing a history of passing is that its a phenomenon, Hobbs acknowledges, intended to be clandestine and hidden, to leave no trace. Which is why, in part, passing has remained the territory of fiction and literary criticism. One year, my grandmother splurged and bought my father a University of Chicago jacket for Christmas. I wonder if my parents marriage would have survived if my sister Sharon hadnt died from breast cancer at 31 in 1998. Lombardo brought in the new year with the song for almost fifty years, from the stock market crash in 1929 to his last performance, during the countrys bicentennial, in 1976. Author of the 1923 modernist classic Cane, Toomer came from an illustrious, high-powered racially mixed family. Both of Hobbss parents came to Chicago as children during the Great Migration, her mother from New Orleans and her father from Augusta, Georgia. Could a young relationship survive a tragedy like that? She has won teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Graves Award in the Humanities, and the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. I wantedto get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death. 25, 2016)A young Chicago girl awoke one summer morning in August in anticipation of the Bud Billiken Parade - the longest-running African American . Throughout the book, there are also those who refused to give up their blackness, despite straight hair and fair skin, who declined, as James Weldon Johnson famously worded it in the 1912 novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, to sell ones birthright for a mess of pottage. Robert Harlan, born to a slave woman and a white fathermost likely the masterin Kentucky, grew up in the same household as the white Harlan boys and later went on as a free man to make a fortune in the California gold rush. Sometimes one whole side would be blank. 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. Allyson Hobbs | Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity Excerpt: Lost Kin (University of Chicago Magazine, MayJune/15). Anyone can read what you share. Perhaps his suffering and hardships imbued his poetry with its signature passion and intensity. And so the matter was decided. Like so many of the people in her book, her own family tree has a gap. 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. Ten or 15 years later, her cousin got what Hobbs calls an inconvenient phone call. Her father was dying. Whats at Stake in the Fisher v. University of Texas Case? Fraziers dissertation, The Negro Family in Chicago, became a groundbreaking text in the field. 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. 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.. I berate myself for such a nave hope. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. 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. 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 laughs as he describes the suit that he wore, with a skinny tie, when they were first married, my mothers fancy dresses, and the special holiday outfits purchased for my older sisters and brother. Allyson Hobbs 97, whose award-winning writing, scholarship, and teaching tackle the history and lasting impact of race in the U.S., will serve as this years chief marshal of alumni, the Harvard Alumni Association announced today. 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. Allyson Hobbs on the Chosen Exile of Racial Passing 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. Subscribe to our Weekly eNewsletterUpcoming EventsRecent News, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 360 She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. When his father died, his farm was on the brink of failure, and Burns and his brother moved the family to a new farm in an effort to stay afloat. During the 19th century, African Americans sometimes passed as white in order to pass as free, using their light complexions to elude slaveholders and slave hunters. One of the most interesting figures in the book is the novelist and poet Jean Toomer. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Allysons first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in 2014, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. Every year, as the hour grows late on Christmas night, my fathers eyes become misty. Lombardos band played Auld Lang Syne just as the clock struck midnight. A Chosen Exile Allyson Hobbs | Harvard University Press 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. Auld Lang Syne was not intended to be a holiday standard, but in 1929 the legendary bandleader Guy Lombardo (known as Mr. New Year) used it to connect two radio programs during a live performance at the Roosevelt Hotel, in New York. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Raising Freedom's Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future after Slavery (Book Review), Searching for a New Soul in Harlem: Allyson Hobbs on Racial Passing and Racial Ambiguity during the Harlem Renaissance, Conclusion: A Paradigm Shift in Fits and Starts. Many of the songs are from the road trip playlists. Her work has appeared in. Building 200, Room 113 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.. What did she feel like when she hung up the phone? Hobbs asks. She teaches courses on American identity; African American history; African American womens history; American road trips, migration, travel and mobility; and twentieth-century American history and culture. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. 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. Sometimes the passing Hobbs depicts is shown to be simply a practical choice what she calls tactical or strategic passing. In 19th-century America people passed as free first, white second. Crossed lines | The University of Chicago Magazine It was fascinating how many of the students really struggled, she says. . Hobbs reckons with the trauma, alienation, and scarsnot only for those who passed, but also for those they left behind. Remember that, Joyce? he asks my mother. Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of history and director of African and African-American studies at Stanford. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. Between the late eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families, friends, and communities without any available avenue for return. 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. Im bleeding out. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. When Hobbs joined Harvards Black Student Association, she was able to connect to the Black community at Harvard socially and intellectually.. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. Events will be simultaneously live-streamed for those who cannot attend in person. I notice my father as he muses silently about times gone by and wish that I, too, could go to that kitchenette that he has described so vividly and glimpse him as a little boy, dressed up in his Christmas finery. Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. She felt close to their pain; she almost grieved with them. Published continuously since 1907.AccessibilityPrivacy Policy, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide. Its lacerations came without warning. She is a contributing writer toThe New Yorker.comand a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. 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. When my mother left our house in New Jersey, my father made two playlists for her with their favorite songs. 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. As this years chief marshal, Hobbs joins alistof illustrious alumni who have held the position, including former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith 94, who is this years featured Harvard Alumni Day speaker; astronaut Stephanie Wilson 88; Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Linda Greenhouse 68; City Year co-founder Alan Khazei 83; former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan 86; and former Rhode Island Gov. 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. 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. She is currently writingtwo books,Far from Sanctuary: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, which examinesthe road trip through the lens of 20th-century African American motorists,and To Tell the Terrible, which explores the collective memory of sexual violence among generations of Black women. While the song absorbs my father, plates are cleared, dishes are washed, Uno cards are located, and new rules for the game are debated. And her mother wanted her to come home right away. He wears a light-blue cashmere V-neck sweater over a neat button-down shirt and brown corduroy pants, classic gifts for Dad from previous Christmastimes. About Allyson Hobbs A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life Inside the Home of the New Years Eve Ball, A Hundred Years Later, The Birth of a Nation Hasnt Gone Away, Our Fifteen Most-Read Magazine Stories of 2015. Another family will live in our house. 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 . His family did not have much money, but, as he would later tell us with a smile, We didnt know we were poor. His grandmother cleaned the homes of white families and often came back to the apartment with stories of what the white folks do. Setting the Christmas table with her best china, she would turn to my father and my aunt and say, with satisfaction, This is the way the white folks do it. The world of the white folks was just as remote geographically as it was in imagination and in experience. A tradition was born. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Hobbs traveled to the school the summer before her senior year. 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. Stop walking like an old man, she scolded him. Because people who passed obviously guarded their tracks and tried to leave no trace. The lighthouse that never failed to guide me home is now out of service. But they get the gist of the main question of the song: Should old friends be forgotten? The marriage is over now. Many of them, Hobbs found, reading his papers, couldnt do it. Certainly there is increasingly a language for mixed identity. 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. Flooded by my own sorrow and heartbreak, I found solace in my parents marriage: They were unbroken; their bond was indestructible. She has served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in History. A Chosen Exile won two prizes from the Organization of American Historians: the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in American history and the Lawrence Levine Prize for best book in American cultural history. An older boy would steal the jacket before its leather sleeves had the chance to crease. It wasnt like I could go into a library and find a folder. The Root named A Chosen Exile among its Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014., 2023 Cond Nast. This time, he is doing his best imitation of Sam Cooke: Its been too hard living, oh my/And Im afraid to die/Cause I dont know whats up there/Beyond the sky/Its been a long, a long time coming/But I know a change is gonna come/Oh yes, it will.. For those few minutes that Auld Lang Syne plays, he is far away from the dining table in Morristown, New Jersey, where he has celebrated Christmas for the past thirty-five years. 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. Hobbs earned her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. She has published essays on race and politics for TheNew Yorker, The New York Times,New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation, TheRoot.com, The Guardian, Politico, andThe Chronicle of Higher Education. Theyre often the ones who are describing the loss. Later she thought again of her distant cousin married to a white man in Los Angeles, unable to come home to the South Side as her father lay dying. I tell new friends, I wish you could have known my parents before. Look at these pictures look at their high school prom picture maybe you can understand. 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. My parents told the same stories of growing up on the South Side of Chicago hundreds of times. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. And she says to her mother, I cant come home.
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