Mixed Race Studies

Fashioning and Refashioning Marie Laveau in American Memory and Imagination

Florida State University
2009
201 pages

Tatia Jacobson Jordan

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Fashioning and Refashioning Marie Laveau in American Memory and Imagination follows the life and literary presence of the legendary figure, Marie Laveau. This female spiritualist lived in antebellum Louisiana from 1801-1881. After her death, her legend has continued to grow as evidenced by her presence in contemporary print and pop culture and the tens of thousands of visitors to her grave in New Orleans every year. Here, I contextualize Laveau in a pre-Civil war America by looking at the African American female in print and visual culture. I trace the beginnings of several tropes in literature that ultimately affect the relevancy of the Laveau figure as she appears and reappears in literature beginning with Zora Neale Hurston’s inclusion of Laveau in Mules and Men. I offer close readings of the appearance of these tropes in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, interrogate her connection to Caribbean lore in Tell My Horse, and show the evolution of this figure in several of Hurston’s short stories. I then offer close readings of the refiguring of Laveau in Robert Tallant’s works, Ishmael Reed’s novel The Last Days of Louisiana Red, and Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Marie Laveau trilogy. I intervene with contemporary scholarship by suggesting that novels like Corregidora by Gayl Jones, Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, and The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara draw not on a general conjure figure, as previously thought, but instead implicitly refashion feminist heroines that resemble Marie Laveau, characters with a circum-Atlantic consciousness that arise from Hurston’s literary legacy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• List of Figures
• Abstract
• INTRODUCTION: “Looking for the Join”: Positioning Laveau Lore in American Studies
• CHAPTER ONE: Historical Context: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Print Culture and Literature
• CHAPTER TWO: “That’s what the old ones said in ancient times and we talk it again”: The Retelling of Laveau in Hurston’s Canon
• CHAPTER THREE: “Dismissing” Laveau: Male Authorship in the Laveau Canon
• CHAPTER FOUR: Glimpses of the Ghost: Hurston’s Legacy in Gloria Naylor, Toni Cade Barnbara, and Gayl Jones
• CHAPTER FIVE: Hearing Voodoo, Writing Voodoo: Cultural Memory in Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Marie Laveau Trilogy
• CHAPTER SIX: Coda
• Appendix
• References
• Biographical Sketch

LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure 1: “Marie Laveau,” 1920s; Franck Schneider after George Catlin Courtesy of the Louisiana State Museum
• Figure 2: The Original Cover of Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman, 1899
• Figure 3: “This is a white man’s government,”from Harper’s Weekly, 1868; Library of Congress
• Figure 4: “‘Well, Missy! Heah we is!'”1913; Library of Congress
• Figure 5: “Jinnoowine Johnson ticket. ‘Carrying the war into Africa,”‘ 1836; Library of Congress
• Figure 6: “An Affecting Scene in Kentucky,” 1836; Library of Congress
• Figure 7: “Children on the Lawn at Brookhill (Nanny Hiding Behind the Children) Courtesy of the Valentine Richmond Historical Center
• Figure 8: Racist Mammy Postcard 1, 1900; Library of Congress
• Figure 9: Racist Mammy Postcard 2, 1900; Library of Congress
• Figure 10: “Mr. T. Rice as the original Jim Crow,” 1832; Sheet Music Cover Illustration
• Figure 11: Zora Neale Hurston in the Caribbean; Library of Congress
• Figure 12: Hurston’s Ft. Pierce Chronicle Column circa 1958
• Figure 13: Cover of Fire!! Literary Magazine, 1926
• Figure 14: “Voodoo Painting/’ Courtesy of the Robert Tallant Photograph Collection, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library
• Figure 15: “Marie Laveau,”2007, Courtesy of Artist Holly Sarre

Read the entire dissertation here.

An Irish Tradition With an Only-in-America Star

The New York Times
2012-03-17

Sabrina Tavernise

GREENVILLE, Ohio — For those feeling down about the United States and its place in the world, meet Drew Lovejoy, a 17-year-old from rural Ohio. His background could not be more American. His father is black and Baptist from Georgia and his mother is white and Jewish from Iowa. But his fame is international after winning the all-Ireland dancing championship in Dublin for a third straight year.

Drew is the first to admit that this is a lot to take in, so he sometimes hides part of his biography for the sake of convenience. As in 2010, when he became the first person of color to win the world championship for Irish dancing—the highest honor in that small and close-knit world—and a group of male dancers in their 70s, all of them Irish, offered their congratulations.

“They said, ‘We never thought it would happen, but we’re thrilled that it did,’ ” said Drew’s mother, Andee Goldberg. She added, “They don’t even know he’s Jewish. That hasn’t been broached. I think it would be too overwhelming.”…

…Neither mother nor son can remember a time Drew wasn’t dancing, or the reason that he started. Drew thought it might have had to do with his mother getting tired of Disney movies and playing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly videos for him. She also took him to musicals and theater performances.

But when he went to a friend’s Irish dance competition in Indianapolis, and saw the girls and boys leaping and skipping, dancing that was part tap, part ballet set to very happy music, he was hooked.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, right,’ ” his mother said, shaking her head. “You’re biracial and you’re a Jew. We thought you had to be Irish and Catholic.”

He said, “I was like, ‘I want a medal.’”…

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St. Patrick’s Day holds mixed emotions for some

The Boston Globe
2012-03-17

Martine Powers, Globe Staff

Ryan McCollum knows that on St. Patrick’s Day, he cuts an unusual figure.

All in green, a traditional Irish Claddagh ring on his finger and a houndstooth flat cap on his head, everything about his attire screams “Irish and proud.’’

But McCollum, 33, is also black. His father, a Navy man from Springfield, married an Irish-American girl from Downeast Maine.

He knows his appearance does not fit the bill of a stereotypical Irishman—most assume he’s black, or maybe Latino—but since childhood, his mother mandated that his Irish pride run fierce.

Ryan McCollum, a political consultant and owner of RMC Strategies, is part Irish.

“Growing up, I knew I was Irish,: said McCollum, of Springfield, “even if the rest of the world didn’t know I was Irish.”

As the American population has grown increasingly mixed-race in recent decades, some descendants of Irish immigrants are claiming a multiracial heritage, though they may differ in appearance from their red-haired, freckled ancestors. For them, the joys of embracing Irish roots are complicated by the challenges of being multiracial.

“I always feel this deep kinship with Irish people in Boston,” said Kelly Bates, a mixed-race Irish-American who lives in Roslindale. “But I don’t always feel like they have this kinship with me.”…

…Paul J. McNamara, president of the 275-year-old Charitable Irish Society, said he does not believe that any of the organization’s 400 current members are multiracial, but the group welcomes membership applications from anyone interested in promoting Irish history and culture…

…While Irish and African-American communities worked and lived in close proximity in the decades after America’s founding—both groups were stigmatized by English landowners—they grew antagonistic toward one another at the end of the 19th century, said Marie E. Daly, library director at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. In the last century, the communities have butted heads over labor rights, housing, and public school desegregation.

Bates said she is just as proud to be African-American as she is proud to be Irish. After all, she said, the sound of bagpipes and African drums both give her chills. But she sometimes worries about expressing pride in her Irish roots. As much as Irish is a national origin, she said, it also identifies her as white. She does not want others to think she has distanced herself from her black identity…

Read the entire article here.

Racing “mixed race” in the 21st century

Gender News
The Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Stanford University
2012-03-16

Krystale E. Littlejohn

Mixed race and social negotiation

What are you?  For many people, this question elicits a variety of responses: student, sister, brother, dancer, mother, sports enthusiast.  For ethnically ambiguous people, however, the question usually refers to what race they are — or whether they identify as mixed race.  Implicit in such a question is the notion that mixed race people have a choice, a choice to decide how they racially identify.

This view of choice implies that America has arrived in a post-race society. For the first time since its origin in 1790, the U.S. Census in 2000 gave respondents the choice to mark more than one race.  Many view the “mark one or more races” (MOOM) option as validation that mixed race people can freely choose their racial identities.  In a recent talk at the Clayman Institute, race scholar Michele Elam challenged the notion of unconstrained choice for mixed race people and offered a nuanced view of the relationship between race, art and social justice in the 21st century…

Read the entire article here.

As Black as We Wish to Be

The New York Times
2012-03-16

Thomas Chatterton Williams

My first encounter with my own blackness occurred in the checkout line at the grocery store. I was horsing around with my older brother, as bored children sometimes do. My blond-haired, blue-eyed mother, exasperated and trying hard to count out her cash and coupons in peace, wheeled around furiously and commanded us both to be still. When she finished scolding us, an older white woman standing nearby leaned over and whispered sympathetically: “It must be so tough adopting those kids from the ghetto.”

The thought that two tawny-skinned bundles of stress with Afros could have emerged from my mother’s womb never crossed the lady’s mind. That was in the early 1980s, when the sight of interracial families like mine was still an oddity, even in a New Jersey suburb within commuting distance from Manhattan. What strikes me most today is that despite how insulting the woman’s remark was, we could nonetheless all agree on one thing: my brother and I were black…

…Until the year 2000, the census didn’t even recognize citizens as belonging to more than one racial group. And yet, so rapid has the change been that just 10 years later, when Barack Obama marked the “Black, African Am., or Negro,” box on his 2010 census form, many people wondered why he left it at that.

If today we’ve become freer to concoct our own identities, to check the “white” box or write in “multiracial” on the form, the question then forces itself upon us: are there better or worse choices to be made?

I believe there are. Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look…

…As the example of President Obama demonstrates par excellence, the black community can and does benefit directly from the contributions and continued allegiance of its mixed-race members, and it benefits in ways that far outweigh the private joys of freer self-expression…

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James Fenimore Cooper and the Invention of the Passing Novel

American Literature
Volume 84, Number 1 (March 2012)
pages 1-29
DOI: 10.1215/00029831-1540932

Geoffrey Sanborn, Associate Professor of Literature
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

Sanborn’s essay seeks to demonstrate that The Headsman, an overlooked 1833 novel by James Fenimore Cooper, is an allegory of racial passing. After showing that the dominant aim of this melodrama about a Swiss executioner’s family is to critique white American prejudice against African Americans, and that it does so by dramatizing the consequences of passing for three members of that family, Sanborn considers the implications of the fact that the end of the novel seems to reverse, or at least neutralize, that critique. Although Cooper is quite serious about the antiracist message of the novel, the involutions of its ending suggest that by impersonating characters whom he thinks of as light-skinned black people passing as white, Cooper seeks imaginative pleasures just as much as, if not more than, he advances political aims. It is worth considering, Sanborn concludes, whether the same may be said of other passing novels—whether the painful secret keeping of literary passers is, for writers and readers alike, more pleasurable than we have imagined.

Read or purchase the article here.

SOC 240 – People of Mixed Descent

University of San Francisco
2011-2012

This course examines the experiences of mixed race populations (mulattos, mestizos, mixed blood Native Americans, and Eurasians) in comparative perspective. Using these experiences, as well as sociological theories (assimilation, third culture, marginality, and multiculturalism), we study how race is a social and political construct, with tangible and material repercussions. Offered intermittently.

Virginia Bastardy Laws: A Burdensome Heritage

William and Mary Law Review
Volume 9, Issue 2 (1967)
Article 8
pages 402-429

Dominik Lasok, Professor of Law
University of Exeter

The theory that British settlers brought with them as much of the common Law of England as was appropriate to their circumstances in the New World, propounded by judges’ and scholars of the past, rings true because it is a general statement and flexible; and is hardly concerned with the quantum of the law actually adopted. Indeed no detailed evaluation has been attempted. It seems that such an evaluation would show that in some areas the connection between the colonies and the mother country should be a source of pride for both countries, but in others only an embarrassing and burdensome heritage. Virginia bastardy laws seem to fall into the latter category.

A comparative study of the law of bastardy of England and Virginia demonstrates a curious affinity at the source and throughout the evolution of the two systems. In some respects the law of Virginia outpaced that of the mother country, yet when English law took a turn towards a modern outlook during the fourth quarter of the last century the law of Virginia not only stopped in its tracks but, one might say, lapsed into the primitiveness of the common law doctrine…

…Marriage and Children’s Status

From the very start the inadequacy of the English law of marriage became manifest as it was necessary, as early as 1628, to make a proclamation forbidding marriage “without license, or asking in church.” In contrast the English, as we have noted earlier, muddled through the uncertainty of marriage laws and the mischief of clandestine marriage until the passing of Lord Hardwicke’s Act of 1753. Another mischief, that of the clandestine marriage of infants, which lingered in England well into the 20th century was soon brought to an end by the General Assembly, which provided that “… . minors under 21 cannot be married without consent of their parents or guardians given personally or by sufficient testimony. …”

Official registration of births, deaths and marriages was introduced in England as late as 1836. Prior to that date parish registers were the only reliable source of information on human pedigree, but the system was entirely voluntary. Official registration was introduced in Virginia by the General Assembly of 1631-1632. The duty of keeping appropriate registers was imposed upon the ministers of the Church and church wardens and backed by a penal sanction.

Having put the formalities of marriage on a sound legal basis the early Virginians laid foundations for a clearly definable status of the offspring. Thus where man and woman were united in matrimony in a public and solemn ceremony preceded by license or publication of banns, such ceremony being duly recorded, there was no reservation about the legal status of children born to such a woman. Subsequent invalidity of the marriage did not upset the status of children, but quite clearly offspring of concubinage could not benefit as the doctrine of common law marriage was purposely repudiated. Correspondingly children of “unmarried” mothers were illegitimate. Rebuttal of the presumption of legitimacy was not unknown as the records of 1640 show an instance of bastardizing a child born to a married woman by a simple device of a confession made under oath by the mother to a midwife. The child was, by virtue of the confession, adjudged to be of “another man.”…

Morality by the Act of the Assembly

The law was clearly set against extra marital relations. The early acts were very much concerned with the moral welfare of the individual. A church was instituted, whose ministers were to conform to the canons of the Church of England, whilst the faithful were liable to punishment for being absent from divine service.The orthodoxy of the Church of England and the uniformity of worship throughout the colony was later secured by law which ordered the ministers to preach the doctrine of the Church of England, the deportation of “popish priests,”  disablement of “popish recusants” from holding any offices ” and the suppression of Quakers.

The duty of bringing up children in Christian religion (of the recognized brand) was first imposed upon guardians of orphans, and later extended to “masters of families,”  who incurred penalties for failing to send their children “to be instructed and catechised” by the minister of the established church.

Where the preaching and positive enactments bidding the individual to lead a chaste and God-fearing life failed the law reacted with anger and severity. Stern measures, adopted from England, were to combat crime and repress adultery and fornication. Church wardens were charged with the presentment of such offenses not only from their own knowledge but also from information of others. To make sure that they did their duty a penalty was provided against the defaulter.

Clearly such measures were intended to strengthen the lawful family and discourage extra-marital commerce. But even so the stern arm of the law could not control the flesh absolutely. The minutes of the Judicial Proceedings of the Governor and Council of Virginia, dated September 17, 1630, reveal that one Hugh Davis was ordered to be “soundly whipped” before an assembly of Negroes and others for “abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians by defiling his body in lying with a negro, which fault he is to acknowledge next Sabbath Day … .” ” No doubt the punishment and its execution was devised to purge and deter but the record reveals a deeper motive to be consummated in the doctrine and law against miscegenation.

Hugh Davis having expiated his crime seems to have incurred no liability to his partner. However, a certain Edward Grymes, “because he lay with Alice West,” was ordered to give security “not to marry any woman till further order from the Governor and Council.” Presumably Alice was a white woman as there is no mention of exemplary flogging and the lady’s name is revealed. Maybe incapacity to “marry any woman” (or should it be any other woman?) until further order imposed upon Grymes was a punishment of a kind, in which case Alice got off rather lightly; maybe it was a preventive measure to ensure that Alice was not left with a bastard child and without a prospect of marrying the child’s father. The absence of further record may perhaps be taken to mean a happy ending for all concerned.

Not so happy was the lot of an unnamed Negro woman who was ordered to be whipped, while her partner in crime, a certain Robert Sweet, was ordered to “… . do penance in Church according to laws of England for getting a negro woman with child …. ,, The reference to English law is obscure, to say the least, but here repression and racial discrimination can be seen at work in a sinister partnership…

…Marriage and the Status of Children

As in the previous period the formal validity of marriage took a substantial share of the legislation, but in addition the essential conditions of a valid marriage were also settled. Following the established principle marriage could be celebrated only by ministers of the recognized church “according to English law,” but unlike in England, the solemnities had to be preceded by a license issued from the civil authority or banns read in church. The sanction for non-compliance was severe. The officiating minister was liable to punishment, the pretended marriage was null and void, children of such a union were visited with the stigma of illegitimacy, and the parties themselves were liable to prosecution for fornication. Certificates for marriage of persons under age were valid only if issued by the clerk of the county where the parents or guardians were resident and the clerk could issue such certificates only with the personal consent of parents or guardians…

…Legislation concerned with the essential validity of marriage began characteristically with an “Act for suppressing outlying slaves.”  The measure was penal and repressive as the Act provided, inter alia, that “white man or woman, bond or free, intermarrying with a Negro, mulatto or Indian is to be banished for ever.” The foundation of the antimiscegenation law being laid down earlier the Act did not expressly pronounce upon the validity of such marriages, but there is no doubt that the sanction of nullity was written in the peremptory words of the statute…

…Servants, Bastards and the Poor

It is significant that a direct reference to illegitimate children should be found in the Act 0 dealing with the suppression of fornication among servants, and the poor law system. Thus the compass of the legislation tends to reflect the character of bastardy law as being concerned not so much with the legal status of the illegitimate child and his relations with his parents, but with bastardy as a social problem confined to servants and the poor.

During the 1661-621 session, the General Assembly decreed, in an Act against fornication among servants, that the child is bond or free according to the status of his mother; and that if there is a child as a result of fornication the mother must serve two years after her indenture or pay 2,000 lbs. of tobacco to her master in addition to a fine or physical punishment (whipping) for the offense. The reputed father had to put in a security to keep the child and so indemnify the parish, which was responsible for the upkeep of poor persons. Inadvertently the Assembly played into the hands of the unscrupulous masters who could thus derive a benefit of extra 2 years of service out of fornication with their female servants. This the Assembly sought to remedy a year later by providing that such a woman should be sold by the churchwardens of the parish where she lived at the time she gave birth to her child for two years after the expiration of her indenture, and that the money so raised should be employed for the benefit of the parish. The possibility of her being released must have been considered by the Assembly as they thought that such a provision would induce such women “… to lay all their bastards to their masters. . . .”  So, for the time being, the severity of the law focused on the mother and the child.

It was considered that the father’s punishment consisted in the keeping of the child which meant in practice that he had to defray the expenses incurred by the parish. However, it was not always possible to exact payment from the putative father especially if he was a servant. To meet this contingency the Act provided that the parish should keep the child during the father’s service, and that he would defray the expenses after the expiration of his indenture.”

The selling of the servant woman by the churchwardens must have proved rather cumbersome as in 1696 the law was brought back to the original. The penalty was halved as the woman was required to put in another year of service after the expiration of her indenture or pay 1,000 lbs. of tobacco to her master or mistress in addition to her punishment for fornication. The putative father was, as heretofore, required to provide a security “to keep the parish harmless.”

This law was substantially re-enacted in 1705 in an Act concerning servants and the rights and duties of masters. Furthermore it was provided that if the reputed father was free he had to give security to the churchwardens to maintain the child. It was enacted, for the first time, that he may be compelled to do so by order of the county court upon the complaint of churchwardens. By the same Act the county courts were invested with the jurisdiction to try “…. petty offences including fornication, bastardy and the like … .” Thus the English statute of Elizabeth I became reincarnated in the colony.

The previous law with regard to the reputed father being a servant was reinforced by like provision enabling the court to enforce its order. The Assembly turned also to the question of female servants getting illegitimate children by their masters. The law once more turned a somersault as it reverted to a formula once used and discarded, that is, that the mother would be sold for one year after the expiration of her indenture or by order of the court made to pay 1,000 lbs. of tobacco and the said fine or whatever she should be sold for would then be turned to the use of the parish. The master, if the father of the child, would as previously suffer punishment for fornication and pay for the upkeep of the child. In addition the indenture may be terminated by court order.

A stiffer penalty was provided for a woman servant (or a free woman) having an illegitimate child by a Negro or mulatto:

. . . And if any woman servant shall have a bastard child by a negro or mulatto, over and above the years service due to her master or owner, she shall immediately upon the expiration of her time to her then present master or owner, pay down to the churchwardens … 15 pounds current money in Virginia, or be by them sold for 5 years to the use of the aforesaid. And if a free Christian white woman shall have such bastard child by a negro or mulatto, for every such offence, she shall within one month after her delivery of such bastard child, pay to the churchwardens for the time being, for the use of the said parish 15 pounds current money of Virginia, or be by them sold for 5 years to the use of the aforesaid ….

The unfortunate child was to be punished too as the churchwardens were empowered to bind him “… to be a servant until he shall be of thirty-one years of age.”…

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The Founder Effect and Deleterious Genes

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 30, Issue 1 (January 1969)
pages 55-60
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330300107

Frank B. Livingstone (1928-2005), Professor Emeritus of Biological Anthropology
University of Michigan

During the rapid growth of a population from a few founders, a single deleterious gene in a founder can attain an appreciable frequency in later generations. A computer simulation, which has the population double itself in early generations, indicates a lethal could attain a frequency of 0.1. Since deleterious recessive genes are eliminated from large populations at a very slow rate, variations in their frequencies in present major human populations may be due to the founder effect during earlier rapid expansion.

Many distinctive human populations are characterized by the presence of one or more lethal or severely deleterious genes in frequencies which would be defined as polymorphic according to Ford’s (’40) famous definition. The particular genetic disorder, however, varies. The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have a gene frequency of 0.07 for the recessive Ellis-van Creveld syndrome, while the Amish as a whole have a frequency of about 0.05 of the recessive cartilage-hair hypoplasia syndrome ( McKusick et al., ’64). Many of the tri-racial isolates of Eastern United States also have a high frequency of a deleterious gene (Witkop et al., ’66). Although such populations are frequently defined by religious or ethnic criteria, there are others not so defined. Several island populations in the Åland archipelago have a gene frequency of greater than 0.1 for von Willebrand’s disease (Eriksson, ’61), and the Boer population of South Africa and some populations of Northern Sweden have frequencies of porphyria much greater than those of other populations (Dean, ’63; Waldenstrom and Haeger-Aronsen, ’67). However, these conditions are dominant and do not have the very severe effects of other hereditary disorders found in high frequencies. On the other hand the population of the Chicoutimi District of Quebec has recently been found to have a gene frequency of about 0.02 for tyrosinemia, which is a lethal recessive (Laberge and Dallaire, ’67).

In most of these cases the population in question has undergone a rapid increase in recent years, and the question arises as to whether this rapid expansion and the original small size of the isolate could account for the high frequency of the deleterious gene. Such an explanation by the founder effect seems obviously to apply to most of the cases cited above, but the founder effect may well be a more general explanation of human gene frequency differences. It is now becoming apparent that the major populations of mankind vary significantly in their frequencies of deleterious genes and that many large populations such as Eastern European Jews have high frequencies of deleterious genes which are found in low frequencies in other populations McKusick, ’66). There have been many attempts to determine how such genes could be polymorphic, for example, Anderson et al. (’67) and Knudson et al. (’67) have discussed cystic fibrosis and Myrianthopoulos and Aronson (’66), Tay-Sachs disease. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to determine the extent to which the founder effect can cause high frequencies of deleterious genes with various models of population expansion.

The occurrence which initiated this research is the gene for sickle cell hemoglobin in the Brandywine isolate of Southeast Maryland. At present the sickle cell gene frequency in this isolate is about 0.1 (Rucknagel, ’64). The high frequencies of this gene in many parts of Africa, India, and the Middle East are now well-accepted as being due to a relative resistance of the sickle cell heterozygote to falciparum malaria. The high frequency in the Brandywine isolate may have a similar explanation, but the surrounding Negro population does not have such a high frequency. And although the endemicity of falciparum malaria in Southeast Maryland in the last century is not known in any detail, it would not appear to have been great enough to explain the high sickle cell frequency in the Brandywine isolate. The isolate also has many other deleterious genes in high frequency (Witkop et al., ’66).

The Brandywine isolate seems to have had its beginning in the early Eighteenth Century when laws were passed to prohibit co-habitation and marriage among races, which prior to then were presumably frequent or at least known. Up to 1720 there were several prosecutions under these laws of individuals with surnames currently present in the isolate (Harte, ’63). Harte (’63) has maintained that the Brandywine isolate is derived from these illegal unions, and Witkop et al. (‘66) show that the most common surname came from such a union. In 1790 the first United States Census recorded 190 persons with the group’s surnames as “other free people,” and since then over 90% of the recorded marriages have been endogamous or between individuals with surnames within the group (Harte, ’59). According to Harte (’59) there are six “core” surnames which have been associated with the group since its founding and comprise 66% of the population and another ten surnames which entered the group after the Civil War, but Witkop et al. (‘66) list seven core surnames and eight marginal ones. The total population of the isolate is now estimated to be 5,128 (Witkop et al., ’66), and the statistics do indicate rapid, if erratic, growth (Gilbert, ’45; Harte, ’63)…

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Tough lessons in CTC’s play about community destruction

MPR News
Minnesota Public Radio
2012-03-15

Nikki Tundel, Reporter

St. Paul, Minn. — A century-old story of discrimination is the basis for a world premiere production opening Friday in Minneapolis.

“Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy” is the Children’s Theatre Company’s adaption of the real-life events of a forbidden friendship during the social segregation of 1912.

It’s a dark tale. But it’s one the theater company believes should be shared – especially with school children.

Actress Traci Allen was a bit wary when she first heard of Minnesota’s Children’s Theatre Company.

“I’m thinking of puppets and, ‘Hello, boys and girls,'” Allen pantomimed before a recent rehearsal.

Her preconceived notion didn’t last long. Today, she is the lead in the CTC’s “Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy.” The children’s play wrestles with various adult themes, from economic turmoil to mortality.

Twenty-six-year-old Allen plays 13-year-old Lizzie. When afternoon rehearsal begins, she’s mourning the death of her grandfather in a song.

The story chronicles the forbidden friendship between Lizzie, who is black, and Turner Buckminster, who is white. It highlights the challenges they face in socially segregated 1912.

“Is there transition music there?” asks CTC artist director Peter Brosius, who directs the play.

The production is based on a Newbery Award-winning book [by Gary D. Schmidt], which in turn is based on the real-life history of Phippsburg, Maine. When the small coastal town was hit by an economic downtown, community leaders looked to the nearby island of Malaga to solve their financial woes.

“The idea,” said Brosius, “Was that the population that was on Malaga, which was a black and mixed-race population, should be removed from that island and that both the coastline and Malaga be turned into a resort. What happened, in fact, was the island was evacuated, people’s homes were moved.”…

Read the entire article and listen to the audio here.