Mixed Race Studies

Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Seminole Maroons

Journal of World History
Volume 4, Number 2 (Fall 1993)
pages 287-305

Kevin Mulroy, Associate University Librarian
University of California, Los Angeles

At what historic moment and by what means does a ‘people’ spring into being?” ask Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer Brown in their introduction to the 1985 ground-breaking study, The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America. It is an intriguing question, and one that ethnohistorians are beginning to ask with regard to a wide range of groups living on many different frontiers. The editors of The New Peoples take strong issue with Frederick Jackson Turner’s belief that American national identity emerged on the frontier as transplanted immigrants were “fused into a mixed race.” Rather, they argue, the story is one of “genesis of composite ‘mestizo’ populations and the creation of bold and startlingly original ethnic and national identities throughout the two continents” of North and South America. “The rise of the ‘new peoples,’ ” Peterson and Brown believe, “is the most significant historical consequence of the wrenching collision and entanglement of the Old World with the New.” As Rebecca Bateman has pointed out recently, “the very processes responsible for the decimation of many cultural groups of the Americas led to ethnogenesis, the birth of new ones.” This paper will argue in favor of Peterson and Brown’s conclusions by examining the beginnings of one of these new and distinct peoples, the Seminole maroons, whose ethnogenesis took place on the southeastern frontier in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, largely as a result of such entanglements between the Old World and the New.

The Seminole maroons’ ethnogenesis and cultural development place them within the frame of reference of neoteric or cenogenic societies, explanations of which tend to stress the multiple heritages of groups formed as a result of frontier expansion. Nancie L. Solien Gonzalez has defined a neoteric group as “a type of society which, springing from the ashes of warfare, forced migration or other calamity, survived by patching together bits and pieces from its cultural heritage while at the same time borrowing and inventing freely and rapidly in order to cope with new, completely different circumstances.” Such groups tended to welcome and even encourage rapid change in order to survive and prosper. Indeed, one might say that they were created by the circumstances to which they adapted.

Coining another term, Kenneth M. Bilby has described cenogenic societies as those

born of conditions associated with the major transformations wrought by the worldwide expansion of capitalism—the large scale uprooting of peoples through wars, conquest and colonization, slavery, migration, and the forced removal of people from their ancestral lands. Most of them emerged from frontier setlings. The resulting sociocultural “fusions” were truly new creations, owing much to the past, but without precedent at the same time. Indeed, the fact that those who evolved these new societies and identities were forced to call upon several cultural pasts, not just one or two, guaranteed original outcomes.

There is considerable overlap between the Gonzalez and Bilby models, but Bilby restricts his argument to small-scale societies. He also takes issue with Gonzalez’s notion that such newly formed societies are essentially “without roots,” arguing instead that “the special kind of abrupt ethnogenesis involved in the creation of these societies does not preclude the transmission of a great deal of cultural knowledge from the past.” Bilby’s central defining characteristic lor cenogenic societies, in fact, is the importance of history and historical consciousness in the development of their self-definition and identity, a notion crucial to an understanding of Seminole maroon ethnohistory…

Read the entire article here.

“IndiVisible” Discusses African–Native American Lives

Newsdsesk: Newsroom of the Smithsonian Institution
2012-01-06

“IndiVisible: African–Native American Lives in the Americas,” a 20-panel display that outlines the seldom-viewed history and complex lives of people of dual African American and Native American ancestry, will open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, Thursday, Feb. 9. The exhibit will be on view through Friday, Aug. 31, in the museum’s photo corridor gallery.

“Indivisible” addresses the racially motivated laws that have been forced on Native, African American and mixed-heritage peoples. Since pre-colonial times, Native and African American peoples have built strong communities through intermarriage, unified efforts to preserve their land and taking part in creative resistance. Over time, these communities developed constructive survival strategies, and several have regained economic sustainability through gaming in the 1980s. The daily cultural practices that define the African–Native American experience through food, language, writing, music, dance and the visual arts, will also be highlighted in the exhibition…

Read the entire article here.

Marriages between African and Native Americans produced many children

Louisiana Weekly
2012-01-02

(Healthy Living News) —Native Americans with African ancestry produced more children than ‘full bloods’ in the early 1900s, despite the odds being against them, a new study demonstrates. Research by Michael Logan, Ph.D., of the University of Tennessee shows that increased fertility occurred at a time when things were not going particularly well for both African and Native Americans either — in social, economic and health terms. The work is published in Human Ecology…

…Dr. Logan examined the reproductive histories of 295 women of mixed Indian-Black and Indian-Black-white heritage. He found that Indian-Black marriages proved to be advantageous in terms of fertility, the average number of births, and offspring survival…

Read the entire article here.

American Indians with African Ancestry: Differential Fertility and the Complexities of Social Identity

Human Ecology
Volume 39, Number 6 (December 2011)
page 727-742
DOI: 10.1007/s10745-011-9439-2

Michael H. Logan, Professor of Anthropology
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Interethnic marriage represents a major trend in the demographic history of American Indians. While the majority of these unions involved Indian women and Caucasian men, a sizeable number occurred between Indians and African Americans. The children of these bicultural marriages were “mixed bloods” who in turn typically married non-Indians or other mixed bloods. Using data from the 1910 Census on American Indians in the United States and Alaska, this article explores why American Indians with African ancestry enjoyed high fertility. Differential rates of fertility among American Indians in the past were due to a number of underlying genetic, cultural, and environmental factors. By identifying these factors, the paradox of why Indian women with African heritage did so well in terms of fertility largely disappears. African admixture, however, greatly complicates Indian social identity.

Introduction

The demographic history of American Indians is characterized by a number of major trends, the most dramatic being the immense loss of life resulting from the introduction of several Old World diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, cholera, and malaria. While the exact size of indigenous populations in the Americas on the eve of European contact will never be known with certainty, scholars agree that up to 90% of the aboriginal population perished as a direct result of these introduced diseases (Thornton 1987, 1997; Ubelaker 1988; Ramenofsky 1987; Dobyns 1983). By 1900, the population of American Indians in the United States reached its nadir of 237,196 individuals (Thornton 1987:160). Although Ubelaker’s estimate (1988:291) for 1900 is more than twice as high (536,562). it does not alter the fact that millions of Indians died from these and other infectious disorders, as well as from other causes including famine, exposure, alcohol-related trauma, and armed combat with whites and other Indians (sec also Larsen and Milncr 1994; Bianchinc and Russo 1992).

Another highly significant demographic trend explored in this article is an increasing number of intercthnic marriages between American Indian women and non-Indian men. Although a limited number of white women married Indian men, this practice was certainly not common nor widely approved (Fllinghaus 2006; Jacobs 2002). The children of such marital unions were “mixed bloods,” who in turn typically married non-Indians or other mixed bloods (e.g.. Perdue 1998. 2003). Such “assortative” mating leads to an expansion of the gene pool, which, according to Quiggins (1990), may explain why highly admixed Cherokee are at lower risk of developing type-2 diabetes than full blood individuals. A similar finding has also been reported tor the Pima of Arizona (Williams et al. 2000). Using data from the 1980 U.S. census, Sanderur and McKinnell observe “intermarriage of Indians and whites is much more prevalent than that of blacks and whites, and … the extent of Indian white intermarriage has increased dramatically in recent decades” (1986:348). The scholarly literature on Indian-white marriages for the nineteenth and early twentieth century is quite extensive (Logan and Ousley 2001; Sturm 1998; Moore…

Read or purchase the article here.

Perspective on Mixed-Blood Natives: The Silence of Indian Country

Native News Network
Native Condition: Analysis and Opinion
2011-09-22

Mike Raccoon Eyes
Eastern Band of the Cherokee
Quallah, North Carolina

SAN FRANCISCO—Cherokee culture was steeped deeply into the great Meso-American pyramid temple cities as early as 800 AD. When the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayans and Aztecs were moving from north to south deep into Mexico and Central America. They quickly absorbed and embraced building their own great pyramid temple spiritual cities they had observed and seen in the great Cherokee cities of the Southeast.

Cherokee intermarriage to both the Mexican and Central Americans would become the norm for the next 300 years. The mixed-blood Cherokees would hold a high place of honor within the Meso-American world of Mexico and Central America. For the mixed-blood Cherokee of the time were the priests, prophets, engineers and administrators, who were the elite of running the new spiritual pyramid temple cities of both Mexico and Central America. Without the mixed-blood Cherokees, the great pyramid temple cities in Mexico and Central America would cease to run, much less function.

The Cherokee started having intergenerational marriage with the Europeans in the early 1700s. Many Cherokee bands and families were quick to see the economic benefits of having trade, land and business dealings with Europeans. In a sense this could be viewed as a classic Cherokee version of the ‘hang around the fort Indians’. However this story was not true for the majority of mixed-blood Cherokee people of that time.

The preference of mixed-blood Cherokee men of the time was to marry European or other mixed-blood Cherokee women. Their children and grandchildren would follow suit. The new generation of light-skinned mixed-blood bourgeoisie Cherokee would wash their hands of and renounce the traditional ways of Cherokee culture and Spirituality.

However, there was another side to the mixed-blood Cherokee people that has been neglected and treated with silence. The story is that of the traditional mixed-blood Cherokee that retained their cultural and Spiritual identities…

Read the entire essay here.

LATC-GA 2145 – Semester in Latin America: Brazilian Racial Democracy

New York University
Spring 2012

Sarah Sarzynski, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Racial democracy, or the myth of racial democracy, has been a dominant national narrative in Brazil throughout the twentieth century. Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves (1933) is often associated as the first articulation of “racial democracy.” Freyre argues that the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery allowed for a racial democracy—that is, a society not based on racial divisions—to emerge through miscegenation. From the start, the national narrative of racial democracy drew comparisons between the Brazilian “racial paradise” and the segregated United States. The well-developed historiography on Brazilian racial democracy refutes Freyre’s arguments about the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery and demonstrates how the narrative of racial democracy masks discrimination and racial inequality in Brazil. Yet, ideas attached to racial democracy have a remarkable persistence in Brazil even today, hindering the implementation of affirmative action policies and the recognition of indigenous peoples as national citizens.

The first part of this course focuses on contextualizing the development of racial democracy as a Brazilian national narrative. We examine the dominant racial ideologies and practices that preceded the idea of Brazil as a racial democracy during the Old Republic (1889-1930). Then, we turn to evaluating Freyre’s seminal work The Masters and the Slaves and how it turned into a political project of the Vargas Era (1930-45). We also analyze the challenges to racial democracy during this period by reading about black social movements and intellectuals, and resistance to national indigenous policies. Course readings include theoretical texts on democracy to position various meanings of racial democracy. The second part of the course traces developments and challenges to Brazilian racial democracy from 1945-1985. Themes include how racial democracy intersects with gender/ sexuality, modernization policies, groups excluded from the national mixed-race type, authoritarian rule, and mass culture/popular culture. The final section of the course shifts to contemporary issues of affirmative action and other racially based policies and resistance in popular culture. We focus on the persistence of notions attached to racial democracy and question how the national narrative has changed over time.

The course draws from interdisciplinary texts and sources including scholarly analyses in literary criticism, history and anthropology; archival documents such as Brazilian and US newspapers; film and popular culture; and, novels. Portuguese is not required.

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States

Duke University Press
2010
584 pages
9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4558-9
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4572-5

Edited by:

Miriam Jiménez Román, Visiting Professor of Africana Studies
New York University

Juan Flores, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis
New York University

The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans; at the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews.

While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, since the arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans in North America in the mid-sixteenth-century, most of them focus on the past fifty years. The central question of how Afro-Latin@s relate to and experience U.S. and Latin American racial ideologies is engaged throughout, in first-person accounts of growing up Afro-Latin@, a classic essay by a leader of the Young Lords, and analyses of U.S. census data on race and ethnicity, as well as in pieces on gender and sexuality, major-league baseball, and religion. The contributions that Afro-Latin@s have made to U.S. culture are highlighted in essays on the illustrious Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and music and dance genres from salsa to mambo, and from boogaloo to hip hop. Taken together, these and many more selections help to bring Afro-Latin@s in the United States into critical view.

Contributors: Afro–Puerto Rican Testimonies Project, Josefina Baéz, Ejima Baker, Luis Barrios, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Adrian Burgos Jr., Ginetta E. B. Candelario, Adrián Castro, Jesús Colón, Marta I. Cruz-Janzen, William A. Darity Jr., Milca Esdaille, Sandra María Esteves, María Teresa Fernández (Mariposa), Carlos Flores, Juan Flores, Jack D. Forbes, David F. Garcia, Ruth Glasser, Virginia Meecham Gould, Susan D. Greenbaum, Evelio Grillo, Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán, Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Tanya K. Hernández, Victor Hernández Cruz, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Lisa Hoppenjans, Vielka Cecilia Hoy, Alan J. Hughes, María Rosario Jackson, James Jennings, Miriam Jiménez Román, Angela Jorge, David Lamb, Aida Lambert, Ana M. Lara, Evelyne Laurent-Perrault, Tato Laviera, John Logan, Antonio López, Felipe Luciano, Louis Pancho McFarland, Ryan Mann-Hamilton, Wayne Marshall, Marianela Medrano, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, Yvette Modestin, Ed Morales, Jairo Moreno, Marta Moreno Vega, Willie Perdomo, Graciela Pérez Gutiérrez, Sofia Quintero, Ted Richardson, Louis Reyes Rivera, Pedro R. Rivera , Raquel Z. Rivera, Yeidy Rivero, Mark Q. Sawyer, Piri Thomas, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Nilaja Sun, Sherezada “Chiqui” Vicioso, Peter H. Wood

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Editorial Note
• Introduction
• I. Historical Background before 1900
  • The Earliest Africans in North America / Peter H. Wood
  • Black Pioneers: The Spanish-Speaking Afroamericans of the Southwest / Jack D. Forbes
  • Slave and Free Women of Color in the Spanish Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola / Virginia Meacham Gould
  • Afro-Cubans in Tampa / Susan D. Greenbaum
  • Excerpt from Pulling the Muse from the Drum / Adrian Castro
• II. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
  • Excerpt from Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our Schools and Colleges / Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
  • The World of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg / Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof
  • Invoking Arturo Schomburg’s Legacy in Philadelphia / Evelyne Laurent-Perrault
• III. Afro-Latin@s on the Color Line
  • Black Cuban, Black American / Evelio Grillo
  • A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches / Jesus Colon
  • Melba Alvarado, El Club Cubano Inter-Americano, and the Creation of Afro-Cubanidades in New York City / Nancy Raquel Mirabel
  • An Uneven Playing Field: Afro-Latinos in Major League Baseball / Adrian Burgos Jr.
  • Changing Identities: An Afro-Latino Family Portrait / Gabriel Haslip-Viera
  • Eso era tremendo!: An Afro-Cuban Musician Remembers / Graciela Perez Gutierrez
• IV. Roots of Salsa: Afro-Latin@ Popular Music
  • From “Indianola” to “Ño Colá”: The Strange Career of the Afro-Puerto Rican Musician / Ruth Glasser
  • Excerpt from cu/bop / Louis Reyes Rivera
  • Bauzá-Gillespie-Latin/Jazz: Difference, Modernity, and the Black Caribbean / Jairo Moreno
  • Contesting that Damned Mambo: Arsenio Rodriguez and the People of El Barrio and the Bronx in the 1950s / David F. Garcia
  • Boogaloo and Latin Soul / Juan Flores
  • Excerpt from the salsa of bethesda fountain / Tato Laviera
• V. Black Latin@ Sixties
  • Hair Conking: Buy Black / Carlos Cooks
  • Carlos A. Cooks: Dominican Garveyite in Harlem / Pedro R. Rivera
  • Down These Mean Streets / Piri Thomas
  • African Things / Victor Hernandez Cruz
  • Black Notes and “You Do Something to Me” / Sandra Maria Esteves
  • Before People Called Me a Spic, They Called Me a Nigger / Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman
  • Excerpt from Jíbaro, My Pretty Nigger / Felipe Luciano
  • The Yoruba Orisha Tradition Comes to New York City / Marta Moreno Vega
  • Reflections and Lived Experiences of Afro-Latin@ Religiosity / Luis Barrios
  • Discovering Myself / Un Testimonio / Josefina Baez
• VI. Afro-Latinas
  • The Black Puerto Rican Woman in Contemporary American Society / Angela Jorge
  • Something Latino Was Up with Us / Spring Redd
  • Excerpt from Poem for My Grifa-Rican Sistah, or Broken Ends Broken Promises / Mariposa (María Teresa Fernandez)
  • Latinegras: Desired Women—Undesirable Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives / Marta I. Cruz-Janzen
  • Letter to a Friend / Nilaja Sun
  • Uncovering Mirrors: Afro-Latina Lesbian Subjects / Ana M. Lara
  • The Black Bellybutton of a Bongo / Marianela Medrano
• VII. Public Images and (Mis)Representations
  • Notes on Eusebia Cosme and Juano Hernandez / Miriam Jimenez Roman
  • Desde el Mero Medio: Race Discrimination within the Latino Community / Carlos Flores
  • Displaying Identity: Dominicans in the Black Mosaic of Washington, D.C. / Ginetta E. B. Candelario
  • Bringing the Soul: Afros, Black Empowerment, and Lucecita Benítez / Yeidy M. Rivero
  • Can BET Make You Black? Remixing and Reshaping Latin@s on Black Entertainment Television / Ejima Baker
  • The Afro-Latino Connection: Can this group be the bridge to a broadbased Black-Hispanic alliance? / Alan Hughes and Milca Esdaille
• VIII. Afro-Latin@s in the Hip Hop Zone
  • Ghettocentricity, Blackness, and Pan-Latinidad / Raquel Z. Rivera
  • Chicano Rap Roots: Afro-Mexico and Black-Brown Cultural Exchange / Pancho McFarland
  • The Rise and Fall of Reggaeton: From Daddy Yankee to Tego Calderon and Beyond / Wayne Marshall
  • Do Platanos Go wit’ Collard Greens? / David Lamb
  • Divas Don’t Yield / Sofia Quintero
• IX. Living Afro-Latinidads
  • An Afro-Latina’s Quest for Inclusion / Yvette Modestin
  • Retracing Migration: From Samana to New York and Back Again / Ryan Mann-Hamilton
  • Negotiating among Invisibilities: Tales of Afro-Latinidades in the United States / Vielka Cecilia Hoy
  • We Are Black Too: Experiences of a Honduran Garifuna / Aida Lambert
  • Profile of an Afro-Latina: Black, Mexican, Both / Maria Rosario Jackson
  • Enrique Patterson: Black Cuban Intellectual in Cuban Miami / Antonio Lopez
  • Reflections about Race by a Negrito Acomplejao / Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
  • Divisible Blackness: Reflections on Heterogeneity and Racial Identity / Silvio Torres-Saillant
  • Nigger-Reecan Blues / Willie Perdomo
• X. Afro-Latin@s: Present and Future Tenses
  • How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans / John R. Logan
  • Bleach in the Rainbow: Latino Ethnicity and Preferences for Whiteness / William A. Darity Jr., Jason Dietrich, and Darrick Hamilton
  • Brown Like Me? / Ed Morales
  • Against the Myth of Racial Harmony in Puerto Rico / Afro-Puerto Rican Testimonies Project
  • Mexican Ways, African Roots / Lisa Hoppenjans and Ted Richardson
  • Afro-Latin@s and the Latino Workplace / Tanya Kateri Hernandez
  • Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latina/o Identities and Coalitions
  • Afro-Latinism in United States Society: A Commentary / James Jennings
• Sources and Permissions
• Contributors
• Index

Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race

Pickering & Chatto Publishers
2010
224 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84893 100 8
E-book ISBN: 978 1 84893 101 5

B. Ricardo Brown, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York

Until the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the prevailing theory on ‘the species question’ was that humans were made up of five separate species, created at different times and in different places. This view—known as the ‘polygenic theory’—was particularly favoured by naturalists of the early nineteenth-century ‘American School’ as it provided a scientific justification for slavery. Darwin’s Origin demolished this view.
 
This work fills a gap in recent studies on the history of race and science. Focusing on both the classification systems of human variety and the development of science as the arbiter of truth, Brown looks at the rise of the emerging sciences of life and society—biology and sociology—as well as the debate surrounding slavery and abolition.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Ecce Homo or Slavery and Human Varietry
• 1 Classification and the Species Question
• 2 Polygenesis and the Types of Mankind
• 3 Darwin in Context: Science Against Slavery
• Conclusion: The Authority of the Sciences of Life

HIS 3015: Intermarraige in the U.S.: Race, Sex and Power in a Multicultural Society

Castleson State College, Vermont
Fall 2011, Fall 2014

An overview of the historical evolution of intermarriage and sexual relations among the various racial and ethnic groups comprising the population of the United States, and the myriad ways in which “miscegenation” has affected the national cultural of the United States from colonial times to the present.

“The Case Was Very Black against” Her: Pauline Hopkins and the Politics of Racial Ambiguity at the “Colored American Magazine”

American Periodicals
Volume 16, Number 1 (2006)
pages 52-73

Sigrid Anderson Cordell, Librarian for History, American Literature, and American Culture
University of Michigan

When Pauline Hopkins’s short story. “Talma Gordon,” appeared in the October 1900 issue of the Colored American Magazine, it ran opposite a photograph of a young smiling African-American boy balancing an American flag across one arm with the other arm raised in a salute (Figure 1). By linking the black child and the American flag, this picture, entitled “The Young Colored American.” attempts to align U.S. interests with those of the black community and reflects the magazine’s aim to recover the role of African Americans in American history. The figure of the child evokes both a sense of optimism and an historical link to America’s infancy. Likewise, the photograph of the  “Young Colored American” echoes the revisionist themes of “Talma Gordon.” a story which calls into question the hagiography of the American elite and instead celebrates the figure of a mixed-race woman who has been scorned by her white father, a scion of New England society. In this story. Hopkins reflects the Colored American Magazine’s mission to “perpetuat[e] … a history of the negro race” and re-write the triumphal narratives of traditional American history. As I will argue, however, the interweaving of gender and racial politics in the narrative structure of this story both reflects and complicates the politics of the journal itself.

Throughout her literary career. Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930) deliberately incorporated politics into her work and claimed a voice for African Americans, particularly African-American women. Rather than publishing in the mainstream literary journals such as Harper’s and the Atlantic that dominated the American cultural scene at the turn of the twentieth century, Hopkins wrote for periodicals specifically targeted to the black community, such as the Colored American Magazine. What sets her fiction and journalism apart from that of her female contemporaries—both black and white—is her blunt depiction…

Purchase the article here.