From the category archives:

Race and Identity

Jewish Confederate Saved by Talking Parrot

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By Dara Horn
The old American South ranks high on the historical list of institutionally bigoted societies – which is why most people are surprised to learn that the Confederacy’s Secretary of State, whose face was even featured on the Confederate two-dollar bill, was a Jewish man named Judah Benjamin. But what is even more astonishing [...]

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Easier not to know?

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By C. S. Manegold
ALMOST HALF a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr. captured a problem that still plagues us today. Cautioning his flock against the complacent embrace of incomplete knowledge, he warned: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’’
I have thought of those words often in the last [...]

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How do you Explain the Seemingly Unexplainable?

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Hendrik Cesars and the Tragedies of Race in South Africa

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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 [...]

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The Color of Pirating

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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 [...]

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Historical Footprints

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by Martha A. Sandweiss
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 [...]

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PASSING STRANGE

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By Holly Tucker
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 [...]

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