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It was fascinating how many of the students really struggled, she says. 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. Now hes telling their storiesand his own. As an alumna, her service to Harvard has included interviewing prospective students, coordinating the Harvard Black Alumni Societys San Francisco chapter, and working on the Harvard College Fund Gift Committee for her Class 15th Reunion. Try as I might, I cant relive my childhood or young adulthood in Morristown. Plus: each Wednesday, exclusively for subscribers, the best books of the week. 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. 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. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. Its a story weve of course read and seen before in fictional accounts numerous novels and films that have generally portrayed mixed-race characters in the sorriest of terms. Stanford, CA 94305Phone:(650) 736-6790Fax:(650) 723-8528Campus Map, Ph.D., University of Chicago, with distinction B.A., Harvard University, magna cum laude, 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. Remember that, Joyce? he asks my mother. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. Those are the only fragments of that story that I have, Hobbs says. My father cant go back to the Chicago of the nineteen-fifties. Only her sister and aunt, both light skinned, traveled to New York to claim her body. Perhaps the accumulated years of grief after my sisters death have finally become too much and this separation is the marital disruption that the N.I.H. Albert Johnston, SB25, MD29, and his wife Thyra passed as white so that he could practice medicine in a job that would have been unavailable to him as a black doctor. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. He remained close to the other Harlans, one of whom was Justice John Marshall Harlan the great dissenter of the Supreme Court who argued on behalf of equal rights under the law in Plessy v. Ferguson. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. From left: A portrait of Ellen Craft disguised as a planter; Jean Toomer, circa 1932; Elsie Roxborough. She was also involved with the Association of Black Radcliffe Women, Harvard Arbitration Association,Harvard Black Register, First-Year Outdoor Program, intramural crew, Institute of Politics, and the Phillips Brooks House Association. The book was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, a Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014 by The Root, a featured book in the New York Times Book Review Paperback Row in 2016, and a Paris Review What Our Writers are Reading This Summer Selection in 2017. 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. I am an adult. study predicted. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. 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. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Allyson Hobbs, an assistant professor of American history at Stanford University, discussed research from her award-winning book, A Chosen Exile: A History on Racial Passing in American Life, at a Women's Studies Colloquium. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. 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. Hobbs traveled to the school the summer before her senior year. For 20 years, he was the town doctor and she was the center of the towns social world. 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. She is a contributing writer to The NewYorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians . The spectacular collapse of my parents marriage has been too much for me. One story Hobbs tells is of Elsie Roxborough, a socialite who briefly dated Joe Louis and Langston Hughes, and who in 1937, after graduating from the University of Michigan, began passing as white to become a model. My parents told the same stories of growing up on the South Side of Chicago hundreds of times. I cling to my sister and childhood friends who remember the past. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne? The arrival of these two ostensibly white women allowed Elsie to remain white, even in death, Hobbs writes. I was really struck reading these family histories and seeing all these examples of people who could barely tell the stories of their families., Thats when she began to see loss as part of the narrative. Du Boiss double consciousness that sense of being in two places at the same time. But my mother wasnt joking. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Perhaps it was more beloved by him because he knew the sacrifices that his mother had made to buy it. I dont have to shuttle between two homes, I wont have to endure remarriages, I dont believe that I am at fault. And in many ways, it is.. As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. 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. She served on the jury for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History. She is the recipient of Stanfords highest teaching prize. 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. So she never goes back, Hobbs says. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. 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. Their four children grew up believing they were white. Toomer argued eloquently for hybridity, but his idea never gained traction., Toomer failed to write anything of lasting impact after Cane. Indeed, Hobbs argues, in the postwar years, to pass as white was in many ways to choose mediocrity to sell ones birthright for a mess of pottage, as James Weldon Johnson put it at the end of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man., Hobbs tells the curious story of the upper-class black couple Albert and Thyra Johnston. Sometimes one whole side would be blank. 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. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. Students' reflections on Allyson Hobbs' seminar, "On the Road: A History of Travel in Twentieth Century America," AMSTUD 109Q, The Great Migration, C-SPAN, "Lectures in History,"May 10, 2011. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. I knew separate holidays would be unbearable, so I planned a holiday party that I rationalized as our familys Christmas. Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Stanford University. Whats at Stake in the Fisher v. University of Texas Case? 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. She committed suicide in 1949. Like gay characters, mulattoes always pay for their existence dearly in the end. 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. Just because it is gone doesnt mean that it never was. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Perhaps knowing that these memories live on in all of us makes the times gone by a little easier to bear. Ive been perseverating over my parents mortality for years. Hobbs earned her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. Hobbss father remembers visiting the familys house once as a child and noticing how light skinned they all were, the parents and the children, and shethis cousinwas the most light skinned. Some years later, long after the phone call and the fathers death, one of the brothers died, and Hobbss father went to the funeral. PROVO, Utah (Mar. Though scholars have widely argued that Toomer passed as white, Hobbs depicts him as not so much rejecting blackness as rejecting racialized thinking. Now Im mourning people who are still alive. "Storytelling Matters to Historian Allyson Hobbs,"The Stanford Dish, February 19, 2016, "Stanford Historian Re-examines Practice of Racial 'Passing,'"Stanford Report, December 18, 2013. She never settled down, moving from California to New York, where she changed her name to Mona Manet. Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Stanford University. The New York Times Sunday Book Review of 'A Chosen Exile", 450 Jane Stanford Way 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. But such was life for my father, growing up in Chicago back then. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. 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. The after-dinner hustle and bustle do not disturb my fathers reverie. 2023 Cond Nast. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and . My connection to Harvard is fundamental to who I am today, Hobbs said. Like so many of the people in her book, her own family tree has a gap. The book was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, a Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014 by The Root, a featured book in the New York Times Book Review Paperback Row in 2016, and a Paris Review What Our Writers are Reading This Summer Selection in 2017. I wantedto get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death. . Ad Choices. She is a contributing writer to The NewYorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of history and director of African and African-American studies at Stanford. This is a different type of grief. I thought, Ive really got to write about the people who were left behind, she says. 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. It won two prizes from the Organization of American Historians, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award for the best first book in American history and the Lawrence W. Levine Award for the best book in American cultural history, as well as other honors. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor.. But the cousin, of course, wasnt there. Martins African American History textbook (2010 - 2010), Co-organizer, Globalizing Black History: IntellectualsConference, Stanford University (2010 - 2010), Faculty Sponsor, United States History Workshop for Graduate Students, Stanford University (2008 - Present), Faculty Advisor, ''Voices'' public service and social action organization of undergraduate African American women, Faculty Lecturer, Ernest Houston Johnson Scholars Program, Researcher, Black Metropolis Research Project Chicago, IL (2004 - 2007), Member, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Member, Immigration and Ethnic History Society, Member, Organization of American Historians, Member, Social Science History Association, Member, Southern Association of Women Historians, Member, Western Association of Women Historians, Member, Vivian Harsh Research Collection at Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago, IL, Ph.D., University of Chicago, History (2009), A.B., Harvard University, Social Studies (1997), AFRICAAM 54N, AMSTUD 54N, HISTORY 54N (Win), Violence in the Gilded Ages, Then and Now, HEAVEN COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY (Book Review). Her plan in part is to follow the Green Book. 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. The Root named A Chosen Exile among its Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014., 2023 Cond Nast. My sister died one year after my future husband and I graduated from college. We two have run about the slopes, and picked the daisies fine; But weve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne. That loss has always been a major, major part of my adult life. As she waded deeper into her research and the aching narratives found there, she began to identify with the people she read about. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. 25, 2016)A young Chicago girl awoke one summer morning in August in anticipation of the Bud Billiken Parade - the longest-running African American . I lined the house with outdoor lights and hired a musician to lead the group in caroling. Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. 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. 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. 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. Here are some tips. Rich Murray, AB94, finds the stuff of life for beloved TV characters. ever waiting to be found just below the surface.. Anyone can read what you share. He is dressed in his finest clothes. While she worked, she sent my father and my aunt to double features at movie theatres as a less expensive alternative to hiring a babysitter. Hobbs book,A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores the phenomenon from the late 18th century to the present. After my sisters death, there were an intolerable number of losses in our family grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins but somehow, my parents pulled through. Hobbs 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 at Stanford. And surely youll buy your pint cup and surely Ill buy mine! Every year, as the hour grows late on Christmas night, my fathers eyes become misty. Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American womens history, and twentieth century American history. Could a California Christmas with yards of garland, a lively rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and a signature Christmas cocktail substitute for our traditional New Jersey one? 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. 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. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. 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. . Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. Stop walking like an old man, she scolded him. My connection to Harvard is fundamental to who I am today, said Allyson Hobbs 97, who will serve as chief marshal. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/parents-divorce.html. 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. But they get the gist of the main question of the song: Should old friends be forgotten? The man whom my mom had loved since she was a teenager was now slower, unsteady and aging. Certainly there is increasingly a language for mixed identity. Lombardos band played Auld Lang Syne just as the clock struck midnight. He is a little boy, seven or eight years old, in a small apartment on the South Side of Chicago, which he shares with his sister, his mother, and his grandmother. 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. Hobbs said she realized while at Harvard that a university would be my professional home. When a child dies before a parent, such a loss defies the expected order of life events, leading many people to experience the event as a challenge to basic existential assumptions, a 2010 study by the National Institutes of Health explained. If I close my eyes, I am back in the car, and my head is resting on one of my sisters shoulders. As a professor at Howard University, where he taught from 1934 to 1959, he asked his students to assemble family histories. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Allyson Hobbs is an associate professor of American history and the director of African and African-American studies at Stanford University. He sits at the dining table after our holiday feast and stares off in the direction of the CD player, holding the remote in his hand. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. A Chosen Exile has been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, Harpers, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Boston Globe. Or, perhaps in their mid-80s after all of the joys, the stories, the sorrows, after all of the life that they have lived together my parents find this final act too frightening and too disorienting. 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. And her mother wanted her to come home right away. On road trips to see relatives in Chicago or to our favorite summer vacation spot, my dad would entertain himself by singing along with the most exaggerated intonations to the hits of the Commodores, the OJays and the Platters. And yet, as Hobbs reminds us, hybrid identities are still racial identities, and as our present moment unfolds, we are often left to wonder if we have seen this movie before., https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/books/review/a-chosen-exile-by-allyson-hobbs.html. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth Century America, CCSRE 25th Anniversary Commemorative Book, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Ph.D. Minor in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, CSRE Ph.D. Minor Frequently Asked Questions, CSRE Graduate Teaching Fellowship Program, Technology & Racial Equity Graduate Fellowship, Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies, Annual Anne and Loren Kieve Distinguished Lecture. After 60 years, my parents marriage is ending. And with that Albert and Thyra began the journey toward blackness again. As the youngest of two children and the only boy in his family, my father was doted on, adored, and treasured. The 1963 album Christmas with the Platters plays, and a dreamy version of Auld Lang Syne wafts through the living room. Another family will live in our house. When you talk to African Americans of a certain generation, everybodyeverybodycan remember the difficulty they had, how hard it was to find a place to stay and a place to eat, Hobbs says. 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. 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. 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. 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 .