The Mixed Experience

a mixed chick on a mixed-up world

You are here: Home / Archives for mixed race historical figures

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Paula Gunn Allen, writer and scholar

by Leave a Comment

Paula Gunn Allen, born in 1939 in New Mexico, was the daughter of a Lebanese-American man and a Laguna-Sioux-Scotch woman.  She once described herself as a “multicultural event.”

Her early education was at mission schools; she went on to earn several advanced degrees including a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1976.

Allen was a pioneer of Native American literary scholarship.  With the publication of her book, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), she helped define the canon of Native American literature.

Allen was also a prolific writer of poems, fiction and essays publishing 17 books during her lifetime.  She received several awards for her work including the American Book Award, and the Hubbell Medal.

Twice married and twice divorced, Allen identified herself as a lesbian at one point, but later said she was a “serial bisexual.”

She died in 2008 of lung cancer.  She was 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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Educator & Activist

by Leave a Comment

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known as Zitkala-Sa or Red Bird, was born in 1876 to a full-blooded Sioux woman and a white man.

She struggled with her mixed-race heritage as a chid on the reservation as well as off.  She received a scholarship to attend Earlham University where she studied violin.

Her activism began after she took a teaching position at the New England Conservatory where the school’s founder’s philosophy was “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

She started writing essays against the movement to make Indian students relinquish their cultural identities.  In 1916, as an officer of the Society of American Indians, she was instrumental in the formation of the Indian Welfare Committee and wrote an investigation into the government’s mistreatment of Indian tribes–specifically, the defrauding of American Indians in Oklahoma of their oil-rich lands.  In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians, a lobbying group for American Indian legal rights.

Zitkala-Sa’s worked as an activist her entire life, but she also kept up her love for music and writing.  In 1938, her opera “Sun Dance” debuted on Broadway.  She died that same year.-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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

 

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: James Welch, award-winning writer

by Leave a Comment

mixed race, multiracial, biracial, mixed race historical figures, mixed race history, biracial historical figures, the mixed experienceJames Welch (1940-2003) was a mixed-race writer of Native American descent.

Welch was the son of two mixed-race Native Americans of Blackfeet and A’aninin tribes.  They were both raised with their Native American cultures as was Welch.

Welch published his first poetry book, Riding the Earthboy Forty, in 1971.  He published several novels including Winter in the Blood, Fool’s Crow, and The Indian Lawyer provided him interntational critical acclaim.  He wrote about Native American life and experience.  He received the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

He died in 2003 from a heart attack.

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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Norris Wright Cuney, politician

by Leave a Comment

mixed race historical figuresNorris Wright Cuney (1846-1898) was the son of a wealthy white plantation owner & politician and an enslaved African-American woman.

The fourth of eight children, Cuney was spared the duties and cruelties of enslavement.  He was sent to school in Pittsburgh at age 13.  The outbreak of the Civil War prevented him from attending Oberlin.  Instead, after years of working on steamships traveling between the North and South, he took up self-study of law and literature.  Soon he became involved in politics with the Republican Party.

In 1870, he became sergeant at arms in the Texas legislature.  Cuney went on to hold several important political appointments.  He became chairman of the Texas Republican Party, but was ultimately removed in 1892 when President Grover Cleveland was elected.  Historians have dubbed the years from 1884-1896 as the “Cuney Era” for all of his accomplishments particularly with regard to empowering the black community.

 

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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Chocolat, famous circus performer

by Leave a Comment

mixed race historical figures, biracial historical figuresChocolat (born between 1865 and 1869-died 1917 ) whose birth name was Rafael had no known surname.

Rafael was born in Cuba to an enslaved woman of African descent.

As a child he was taken to Spain to work as a servant.  He escaped his servitude at age 14 and earned a living doing various menial jobs and performing on the streets for a change doing strength and dance routines.

After the popular performer Tony Grice saw Rafael perform, Grice offered him an apprenticeship with the circus.  He was given the stage name Chocolat because of his dark skin.

In 1886, Chocolat debuted at the Nouveau Cirque.  Soon after, Foottit, a famous English clown, would hire him away from Grice.  Chocolat became part of several popular acts thereafter.  In 1890, Chocolat became Foottit’s regular partner.  Their act is described as a “routine between an authoritarian white clown, and a stupid poor Negro” who at the end of each sketch was slapped.  In 1905, Foottit & Chocolat as they were known lost their contract with Nouveau Cirque.  Their act ended in 1910.

Chocolat was a central cultural figure during his time.  He was the subject of several paintings and sketches by Toulouse-Lautrec; the model for popular soap advertisements; and the character inspiration for writers Colette and possibly Samuel Beckett.

Chocolat (nor Foottit) achieved the level of success in his continued performing career.  He died penniless at 49. – 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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Moses Roper, abolitionist & truth-teller

by Leave a Comment

Moses Roper (1815-1891) an enslaved mixed-race man wrote one of the earliest books about being enslaved.

mixed race historyRoper was the son of a mixed-race enslaved woman and a white man who was their enslaver.  At age 7, Roper was separated from his mother when he was sold to another slave master.  He would be traded more than 17 times until finally he escaped in 1834 after suffering the brutal treatment of many of his enslavers.

He made his way to New Ymixed race historyork and then in 1835 he went to England.

Roper became a famous abolitionist speaking throughout England about his experience and the cruelties of American slavery.  In 1838, his book A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery was published.

Roper established a life for himself in England and Canada for the next several years.  He married in 1839 and the couple had four children.

In the 1860s, Roper returned to the United States and continued to lecture without much success.  He died in 1891 in very poor health.-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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Fanny Eaton, muse and model

by Leave a Comment

mixed race historyFanny Eaton (1835-1924) was born in Jamaica.  She was the daughter of woman of African descent and a white man.  As a child, her family moved to England.  In 1857, Eaton married the man with whom she would have 10 children.

Eaton began modelling for the Pre-Raphaelite artists around the time that she got married.  In 1859, Simeon Solomon did the earliest sketches of her.  She would also serve as the muse to Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Albert Moore, Rebecca Solomon, Joanna Boyce and many others.  Her modelling career lasted for about a decade.

 

 

 

 

Eaton’s career may have been short but it was significant in the number of artists who were inspired by her as well as the fact that she was praised for her beauty as a black mixed-race woman during the Victorian era.

Eaton’s husband died in 1881 and by then she was working as a seamstress.  She died in 1924.-Heidi Durrow

Sources:

Fanny Eaton: The Black Pre-Raphaelite Muse that Time Forgot, AnOther March 7, 2016.

Fanny Eaton: Forgotten Beauty, Carribbean Beat by Judy Raymond Jan./Feb. 2017.

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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Anne Brown, World-Class Soprano & Broadway Star

by Leave a Comment

Anne Brown, (1912-2009), was a world-class soprano and the inspiration for George Gershwin’s Bess in his folk opera “Porgy & Bess.”

Brown was the daughter of an African-American surgeon and mixed-race musician.  She attended Juillard where she received the Margaret McGill Prize as the school’s best singer. She started working with Gershwin after writing to him and requesting an interview.  She nailed it.  As Gershwin composed the opera, Ms. Brown sang the music.  “Porgy and Bess” opened in October 1935 with Brown playing Bess.  Ms. Brown was the only person Gershwin ever saw perform the role of Bess. Brown also appeared in “Mamba’s Daughter” in 1939, and a revival of “Porgy and Bess” in 1942.

 

I’ve lived a strange kind of life–half black, half white, half isolated, half in the spotlight. #mixedrace #multiracial

Click To Tweet

Brown then performed throughout Europe and the Americas as a concert artist. In 1948, she moved to Oslo and married a Norwegian man.  In a 1998 New York Times article she said: “We tough girls tough it out.  I’ve lived a strange kind of life–half black, half white, half isolated, half in the spotlight.  Many things that I wanted as a young person for my career were denied to me because of my color.”

Brown was not able to continue her singing career because of difficulties with asthma.  She became a voice teacher of many famous performers including Liv Ullman.

In 1998, Brown received the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America.

Brown had two daughters–one from her second marriage and one from her third.  Her marriages ended in divorce.  Brown died in 2009.-Heidi Durrow

Gershwin & Bess: A Dialogue with Anne Brown {excerpt} from Nicole Franklin on Vimeo.

 

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!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.

The Mixed Experience Minute Vlog

Guest Host Jennifer Frappier

Podcast Episodes