The Passage Project

Nina Jablonski on the Nature of Skin

I was recently referred to an insightful TED Talk presentation by anthropologist Nina Jablonski discussing the science behind skin color. Filmed earlier this year, it's a true celebration of our diversity and what makes us all beautiful.

Her book Skin: A Natural History will definitely be on my bookshelf any day now.

Annette Gordon Reed Wins Pulitzer for "The Hemingses of Monticello"

I have been absent from the blogosphere for about a month, but am now back and plan to post regularly.The first order of business to congratulate Annette Gordon Reed on the Pulitzer she won for her latest book The Hemingses of Monticello. The book chronicles the Hemings family from the 1700s in Virginia to 1826, when Thomas Jefferson died at his and the enslaved Hemings family home at Monticello.

I got the book when it first came out last September, not only because of my interest in the life of Sally Hemings, but because of the Hemings family's imprint on the American experience and the intriguing life of Jefferson's chef and former slave James Hemings, brother of Sally. I read Reed's earlier book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy years ago and visited Monticello in 2006 to learn as much as I could about the Hemingses. After hearing about the Pulitzer win on Monday, I plan on finally sitting down with her latest book starting tomorrow.

If you would like to see more of Gordon-Reed, she will be giving the University of Delaware's Department of History's William Watson Harrington Lecture on May 7th. The topic of her lecture will be "The Hemingses of Monticello: Writing the Life of an Enslaved Family" and the event is free and open to the public.

Below is a short list of profiles on Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello:

• The Root's interviews Gordon-Reed in a piece in the Washington Post.

• BookVideo.tv profiles the author her nomination (and later win) for a National Book Award.

• Gordon-Reed speaks to CNN about Jefferson's relevance in today's society, especially in the conversation about present-day piracy.

It's Official: Reunion 9

At 12am this morning I received many wonderful birthday gifts from my boyfriend and one of them was the genealogy program Reunion 9. Yes!

I downloaded the demo about a month ago after doing some research into several other genealogy programs such as Ancestry.com's Family Tree Maker and Mac Family Tree. I was initially leaning toward Family Tree Maker until I learned that it is not Mac friendly and my Powerbook is too small to support Virtual PC. (Sadness.)

Once I started using Reunion, I fell in love with it. The software is simple to use and organizes all of your information extremely well. I no longer have to dig through endless documents looking for information. You can create several types of family history charts, attach photos and other files to your ancestor person sheets and create your own categories within each person sheet. What I love most right now is the ability to suppress or add what categories you would like to be visible when printing. This lets you tailor your files so you can see what you need, making it easier for you to sort your data. There is even a new iPhone application to let users take the information with them.

I'm still in the early stages of the program, so I will post additional information as I learn.

Genealogy How-To's: In the Beginning

Image of Family Tree Maker courtesy of Ancestry.com.

I’ve decided to take on the arduous task of researching my family tree and thought it might be a good idea to purchase genealogy software to make things a bit easier. Sorting through census records, newspaper clippings and slave rolls is a bit daunting so I thought it would be wise to be as organized as possible.

The first software program that was on my list was Ancestry.com’s Family Tree Maker because it also comes with one, three or six month memberships to their incredible database of genealogy records.  I love their products (the well-designed website, database and magazine) and was thrilled when I learned that purchasing their software also included the extra perk of membership.

Image of Reunion 9 courtesy of the Leister Productions website.

However, I soon discovered that Family Tree Maker is not available for Mac’s. Disappointment is not the word for how I felt. Try heartbroken. After briefly toying with the idea of installing Virtual PC on my Powerbook, I have decided to move on and continue my search for Mac-friendly genealogy software. At the moment, I am leaning toward Reunion 9 by Leister Productions after looking into MacFamilyTree by Synium Software. Macworld's website has reviewed the latest version of Reunion.

Is there a genealogy software that you prefer?

U.S. Army Apologizes for World War II Convictions in Fort Lawton Case

I must say, it's a bit odd when major news headlines include your own family members and their well-kept secrets. My family received a surprise this past Sunday when my uncle, Richard Barber, came across a newstory on the website of CNN. The network was reporting on a ceremony being held in Seattle honoring black soldiers who had been wrongly convicted and tied to the death of an Italian P.O.W. imprisoned at Seattle's Fort Lawton in 1944.  CNN went on to report that a book by journalist Jack Hamann called On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II came out in 2005 detailing the trial. Curious about the story, my uncle went online to do research, looked at  Hamann's website. There, he came across photos of some of the convicted men and one of them was my grandfather Richard H. Barber.

I purchased a copy of the book on Monday and was deeply moved when reading about my grandfather and a chapter of my family history that I never knew about. As strange as all of this is for me, it must be even more so for my mother and her siblings. In addition to detailed information about the trial, the book mentions my grandmother, Jeanne Barber, who at the age of 19 was one of two civilians who sat in the courtroom during the trial and fought to get the convictions overturned. The book also includes endearing details such as my grandfather winking at my grandmother from across the courtroom. While talking to my Aunt Lena, she laughed and said that was something she could definitely see her father doing. The books details about my how hard my grandmother worked to try to get the convictions overturned, and my mother said that definitely fit her character because she regularly fought to give her family and all those around her the best and recognized an injustice when she saw it. (Jeanne Barber died when my mother, Bonita, was a teenager so I never got the chance to meet her and she never got to watch her children and grandchildren grow up. My grandfather Richard Barber died in 1982.)

One of the most disturbing facts of this story is that innocent men were convicted and who knows how differently their lives could have turned out. The convicted men lost their pay and all benefits, including their G.I. Bill's which would have given them a chance to further their education. In addition to that, being convicted of a crime leaves a permanent stain and undoubtedly limited them in terms of employment. Hopefully the army will grasp how dramatically the convictions impacted these men's lives.

The government has taken steps to rectify the situation and I look forward to learning what else they have planned and what more I will learn about my family. I am already researching an extraordinary story of another family member who died in the early 1930's and am curious to learn what else is out there.

Journalist William Yardley wrote an excellent piece about the story in today's New York Times. In it, he discusses the life of Samuel Snow, one of the exonerated men who were honored on Sunday in Seattle, but passed away before the ceremony took place.

Passing

Pass \pas\: to identify oneself or be identified as something one isn’t.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

The practice of passing is not a new concept to me. As a child I heard stories and saw photos of relatives who were light enough to pass and later learned of some who actually crossed the color-line. In 2000, I learned that my great-great uncle’s secret was revealed in headlines across the country with his death in 1932. Though he never severed ties with his family, during his entire professional career as a military officer, he lived as a white man. Born in the late 1800s, he occasionally passed in his early years, but enlisted in the army as a white man during WWI in 1917. Without going into great detail, he divorced his first wife, a fair-skinned black woman who could also pass, and later married a white woman from a wealthy Southern family. In his death, his life became a scandal: a respected career military officer, a 1st Lieutenant who served in WWI, was actually a black man. But, while doing the research into his life, I have come to see that he was not a man trying to get away with something or make fools of others. He was a man who wanted to be just that. A man.

I am in the process of working on a project about his life and while I can go on and on about the complexities of this issue, for now I would prefer to share some of the books and films I have come across while researching my family history and the complex concept of passing.

The book One Drop by Bliss Broyard is one of the latest books exploring the idea. Her father, writer and New York Times Book Review critic Anatole Broyard, revealed the truth of his racial identity to his children right before before his death. This side of Broyard’s life is also explored in the essay, "The Passing of Anatole Broyard" by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his 1998 book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.

The following is a list of other books and films that have dealt with this delicate subject matter and/or the complexities of racial identity:

• Passing by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larson was published in 1929

• An Auto-biography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson was published anonymously in 1912 and again under Johnson’s name in 1927.

• The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte (1997)

• Caucasia by Danzy Senna (1998)

• The Human Stain by Phillip Roth. The book, published in 2000, was later turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins in the lead role.

• When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race by Judith Stone (2007)

• Cane River by Lalita Tademy (2001)

• The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman (1929)

• Black, White and Jewish: An Autobriography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker (2002)

• Other People’s Skin: Four Novellas Edited by Tracey Price-Thompson and TaRessa Stovall (2008)

• Pinky, directed by Elia Kazan (1949)

• Imitation of Life (Directed by John Stahl in 1934 and Douglas Sirk in 1959. The 1934 film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Both films were based on the novel by Fannie Hurst.)

• School Daze, directed by Spike Lee (1988)