It started with a 1902 photograph of businessmen and cowboys, college students and cattle ranchers. Their suit jackets were buttoned, their white collars were starched, and each man had parted his hair in the center. They were The Bozeman Mandolin and Guitar Club, and when Dennis White saw the photo, he was inspired. Determined to revive the tradition, he helped form The Montana Mandolin Society in 1999. Today, it tours the country playing in concert halls and at festivals.


By Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully
When we began researching our biography of Sara Baartman we thought we knew what we would find. Two white men brought Sara Baartman to 19th-century London, where she was put on show in Piccadilly. Every study, every bit of popular knowledge representing Sara Baartman’s life as the “Hottentot Venus,” had said so.
Newspapers in London at the time described Hendrik Cesars as a colonist. The extraordinary efforts to return Baartman’s remains, beginning soon after South Africa’s first democratic elections and ending in her state funeral in 2002, had represented her life as that of a black woman taken advantage of by white men. President Thabo Mbeki has said as much in his eulogy, extending his comments to a denunciation of Western science, indeed the entire Enlightenment.
We would discover, however, that Cesars was, in the racial categorization of the Cape, a “free black.” His descendants were slaves, brought forcibly to South Africa to work on the farms and in the city. Cesars’s wife also descended from slaves. The couples’ life in a poor section of Cape Town remained indelibly marked by slavery. Laws prohibited them from wearing fancy clothes. They had to apply for permission to leave the area. And they were barred from many of the economic opportunities “free burghers” enjoyed. One of the men responsible for Sara Baartman’s exploitation was, himself, subjected to prejudice.
South Africans, and indeed most of the modern world, can only see others for the color of their skin. Modern racism and its many legacies seems to have forever shaped how one speak of others, our very apprehensions of past and present. This is not how the world always was. Hendrik Cesars’s complexion was “white”, even as he was known by others in the Cape as “free black.” This is why when Cesars traveled
to England Londoners saw him as a white man, a colonial settler, a mean, violent master. They could not see him for what he was, could not understand his humanity even as they criticized his actions, the decisions he made. And this is how it remains, regrettably, today.
Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully are authors of Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography.
By Peter T. Leeson
Eighteenth-century pirate features, from skull-emblazed flags to wooden legs, pervade popular culture. One important pirate feature that doesn’t appear in most pop-culture treatments, however, is the fact that upward of a quarter of the average early 18th-century pirate crew was black.
Historical evidence on the free vs. slave status of black pirates is conflicting. Because of this it’s tempting to conclude that pirates, who were no more racially enlightened than their legitimate contemporaries, typically treated blacks as their legitimate contemporaries did: they enslaved them.
But as I argue in my new book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, this conclusion may be mistaken. Although some black pirates were slaves, it’s probable that many, and perhaps even most, black pirates were not. To be sure, pirates were as prejudiced as their legitimate contemporaries. But unlike in legitimate society, in pirate society, prejudiced thinking didn’t necessarily mean prejudiced policy.
The reason for this is straightforward: pirates were profit seekers. They cared more about gold and silver than they cared about black and white. And granting blacks their freedom was often more profitable than enslaving them.
A pirate crew’s benefit of enslaving a sailor was the additional booty the slave’s wage-less labor brought it. But the crew’s cost of enslaving a sailor could be much higher. If the slave escaped and informed the authorities on his pirate captors, or together with other conscripts succeeded in overthrowing his enslavers and delivered them to the law, the pirates faced the unpleasant prospect of hanging and thus the end of their roguish lives. Since the cost of enslaving a sailor often exceeded the benefit, in many cases, granting black sailors their freedom was simply good business.
Pirate profit seeking, not progressivism, prodded some sea scoundrels to practice racial tolerance. But this doesn’t diminish the tolerance they showed. In their pursuit of self-interest these pirates were led, as if by an “invisible hook,” in some ways reminiscent of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” to treat black sailors as equals.
Peter T. Leeson is author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton University Press). Image courtesy of the author.
In Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, I unravel the hidden life of Clarence King, the celebrated western American explorer, who crossed the color line from white to black to marry the woman he loved. For thirteen years, from his marriage in 1888 until his death in 1901, King lived a secret double life as a black Pullman porter named James Todd. His prominent white friends never knew that King had an African-American wife and five mixed-race children. And Ada Copeland, the woman he married, had no idea of her husband’s true identity. Not until King lay dying in 1901, did he disclose his true identity to his wife.
King sought to ensure that no paper trail of his secret life would exist. But most families in late nineteenth-century America left behind some trace in the historical records, and this one was no exception.
The federal census records proved essential to my search. Historians of a certain age will recall the tedium of scrolling through endless microfilm reels of census data. Now the data is digitized and searchable. One can track characters across time. Minor characters spring instantly to life. Broad hypotheses are easily checked. I could quickly calculate, for example, how many Georgia-born African Americans lived in Manhattan in 1880. Not very many. I could then infer that Copeland had exercised a rare sort of ambition in moving north from her native state.
My students initially find census records uninteresting. But they soon see their potential. They can figure out who lived in a particular neighborhood, imagine the languages that would be heard on the street or think about the work places where people spent their days. They can ask hard questions about family structure, gender, and literacy. In short, they can make these historical records speak to individual life stories as well as to larger themes of American history.
Years ago, I approached an academic library to request that they subscribe to Ancestry.com, the best and most easily navigated of the proprietary digitized census sites. We don’t buy resources for genealogists, they said. I quickly showed them what academic historians might do with these resources and won them over. Now the librarians are among the database’s biggest fans, and I incorporate census research assignments into many of my undergraduate courses. Students initially get hooked by finding the trace of a grandparent. But they quickly discover that they can become real historical sleuths, as well, able to recover forgotten bits of the past.
Image: Wallace King, Ada and Clarence’s son (right) in the family’s home, 1950s. Courtesy of Patricia Chacon.
Wonders & Marvels most often profiles history and historical fiction on pre-1800 topics. But Martha A. Sandweiss’ Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line is just too good to pass up. And it’s always a treat to help spread the word about well-written books by fellow academics. (Sandweiss is a Professor of History at Princeton.)
Passing Strange tells the story of Clarence King who is best known for his work as a geologist and writer. But King had a secret–a big one. In order to marry the woman he loved, he lived a double life as a black man. Sandweiss’ book presents King’s work, love, and life, in the context of racial politics from the late 19th century into the 1960s. An extraordinary story told by a writer with a keen historical eye and deep respect for her subjects.
The New York Times ran not just one, but two reviews of the book. And if you’re still not convinced, you might take a peek at a third in the Washington Post, by Annette-Gordon Reed. If the reviewer’s name sounds familiar, it is. Reed is author of The Hemingses of Monticello.
Image: Clarence King, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior

Up this week: Beverly Swerling’s City of God: A Novel of Passion and Wonder in Old New York.
Beverly’s novels are spell-binding journeys into an era rich in history and intrigue. For a flavor of her work, take a peek at her latest book trailer. (Yes, there are such things as book trailers now!) This novel, in particular, caught my eye because of its many references to medical life in the 19th century. My guess that many Marvels & Tales readers will enjoy it!