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Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Lillian Smith, author & social activist

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mehm15_lillian_smithLillian Smith (1897-1966) was a social critic and author of the best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944) about an interracial love affair.  A white woman, Smith championed the rights of women and minorities in her writing and through her community involvement.  According to Wikipedia, Smith “was one of the first prominent Southern whites to write about and speak openly against racism and segregation.”  “Segregation is spiritual lynching,” she once said.  Smith was the author of several books including Killers of the Dream (1949), Now Is the Time (1955), and Our Faces, Our Words (1964).  In a letter to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Smith wrote: “My warmest greetings to you and to your congregation and to your people who are my people too, for we are all one big human family.  I pray that we shall soon in the South begin to act like one.”-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Sargent Johnson, artist

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mehm15_sargent_johnsonSargent Johnson (1887-1967) was a talented artist–painter, sculptor, and lithographer–known for abstract and early modern styles.  Born in 1887, he was the son of Anderson Johnson who was of Swedish descent, and Lizzie Jackson, who was African-American and Cherokee.  He started his art training at thirty-two at the California School of Fine Arts.  There, he won several prizes which would be the first of many more to come.  In 1926, he started showing his work at the Harmon Foundation. Johnson “worked with assurance in media ranging from carved wood to watercolor and metal, though his humanistic themes increasingly put him out of step with Bay Area art after 1950.  Johnson took part in the Federal Arts Project and received local commissions that included church murals and the still extant decoration of a relief sculpture on a vast outdoor wall behind San Francisco’s Washington High School.  Johnson taught briefly at Mills College but remained committed to his own art above all else,”  according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson died of a heart attack in San Francisco in 1967 at the age of eighty.  More information about his art and life can be found here.

On being mixed, Johnson said: “I had a tough time in the early days.  They didn’t give me much of a chance.  They didn’t know who I was, but I had made up my mind that I was going to be an artist.”-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Wifredo Lam, painter

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mehm15_wifredo_lamPainter Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was born in Cuba, the son of a Spanish/black mother and a Chinese father.  Trained as an academic realist, Lam’s art evolved to include modern aspects after his introduction to the work of Picasso and Matisse in Spain.

Picasso was a good friend to Lam and also a great influence.  But after living in Europe for many years, Lam returned to Cuba in 1942 where he reconnected with his Afro-Cuban background and transformed his work yet again.  Lam’s masterwork is The Jungle, often compared to in achievement, and once hung by, Picasso’s Guernica.

Of his art Lam once said: “… With all my energy I sought to paint the drama of my country, but most of all to lend expression to the spirit of Negro man, the beauty of Negro plastic art…”-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Mildred Loving, social justice pioneer

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Mixed Experience History MonthMildred Loving’s challenge of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law led to the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision  (Loving v. Virginia) which affirmed the right of people of different races to marry.  Loving and her white husband, Richard, were arrested when they returned home to their rural Virginia town and pled guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”  It was illegal for whites and blacks to marry in at least 17 states at the time.  In its landmark unanimous ruling the Court stated: “There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry soley because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause.”  My parents married in 1965 in Denmark; it was illegal for them to marry in South Carolina, the location of my father’s next assignment.  When my father’s work superiors found out that he had married a white woman, he was relocated to the Pacific Northwest instead.  Mildred Loving died in 2008 at the age of 68.-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: John James Audubon, naturalist

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mehm15_james_audonbonJohn James Audubon (1785-1851) was the son of a French sea merchant and a French chambermaid.  Audubon, born in Saint Domingue, became an accomplished ornithologist and wildlife artist.  He wrote the seminal, Birds of America, in which he painted and described birds of America and its territories.  The Audubon Society is named in his honor.

From the research I have done, there are conflicting accounts concerning whether Audubon himself was Mixed.  He was definitely raised in a Mixed household.

“According to his earliest written testimony, he was born around 1780 at his father’s plantation in Louisiana , the son of an exceptionally beautiful Spanish Creole woman and a French admiral. In fact, he was born Jean Rabin on April 26, 1785 in Les Cayes, Saint Domingue (later Haiti ), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and merchant, Jean Audubon, and a French chambermaid, Jeanne Rabin. When he was 3, young Jean was brought to France and placed in the care of his father’s indulgent wife. He and his mulatto half-sister Rose were formally adopted by the Audubons in 1794 and he was re-named Jean Jacques Fougere Audubon.”

Audubon2_2I was particularly intrigued to learn about Audubon’s Mixed heritage because of the importance of birds and bird-watching for the character Brick in my book The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.  Brick is a light-skinned African-American mistaken for Mixed, becomes obsessed with identifying birds–he loves the certainty of being able to name something with just a visual cue.-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Ellen Craft, abolitionist

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Mixed Experience History MonthEllen Craft (c.1826-1897), the daughter of a slave and her white master, became a leading abolitionist after she escaped from slavery.  The very light-skinned Craft disguised herself as a white man and escaped with her husband who acted as her man-servant.  In 1860, the couple published a book-length account of their experience called Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.051807_EllenCraft

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 2015: Elizabeth Keckley, White House seamstress & memoirist

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Mixed Experience History MonthElizabeth Keckley (1818-1907), a mixed-race woman bought her freedom in 1855 for $1200.  Keckley was an accomplished dressmaker and went on to become the seamstress and confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

In 1862, Keckley established the Contraband Relief Organization, a women’s organization that helped former slaves seek refuge in Washington D.C.  In 1868, she published her autobiography Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.  Her public discussion of White House life was unprecedented and was roundly criticized as a salacious tell-all.  Keckley was ostracized and the book was pulled from bookstores.  She died in the Home for Destitute Colored Women & Children in 1907.-Heidi Durrow

Here’s my Mixed Experience History Minute about Keckley.

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. Copyright 2015

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Philippa Schuyler, child prodigy and journalist

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Mixed Experience History Month phillipa schuylerPhilippa Schuyler (1931-1967), the daughter of black conservative writer George Schuyler, was a talented pianist and journalist who demonstrated her gifts at an early age.  At age nine, she was profiled in “Evening with a Gifted Child” by a celebrated New Yorker writer.

As a teen-aged concert pianist, she toured widely throughout the United States and overseas and claimed New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as one of her biggest fans.

In 1967, Schuyler died in a helicopter crash off the Vietnamese coast where she had traveled as a war correspondent.  Alicia Keys is rumored to star in a film version of Schuyler’s life in development (based on Kathryn Talalay’s book Composition in Black and White).-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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Charles Chestnutt, writer & activist

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Mixed Experience History MonthCharles 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.

Charles Chestnutt, writer & activist. Mixed Experience History Month 2015. #multiracial

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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.

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. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: William H. Johnson, artist

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Mixed Experience History Month

Born in 1901, William H. Johnson was a talented artist who became famous for his Scandinavian landscape paintings and “primitive” scenes of black life.

A South Carolina native and son of an African-American/Sioux woman and a white man, Johnson moved to New York in 1918 to study at the National Academy of Design.  In 1926, he was passed over for a traveling scholarship because of his race.  Considered one of the school’s most talented students, a teacher gave him $1000 to travel abroad.

Whjohnsonpainting2Johnson would spend most of the next twelve years in Europe including France, Norway and Denmark.  In 1930, he married a Danish artist, Holcha Krake.

Johnson returned to the U.S. in 1938 with his wife.  When she died in 1944 of cancer, he returned to Europe only to return to New York three years later because of his own failing health.  Johnson died in 1970 after being hospitalized for the last 20+ years of his life.

Today Johnson’s work is represented in many important collections, including National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; The Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and Kerteminde Museum/Johannes Larsen Museet, Denmark.

More information: William H. Johnson Foundation (provides grants to artists); biographical essay.

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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014. Copyright 2015.

NOTE: This is a repost from a previous year as I re-visit the Afro-Danish connection for the first week of this month’s profiles.

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