Once in a while, I hear her playing those songs and I wonder what she is thinking. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. When my mother left our house in New Jersey, my father made two playlists for her with their favorite songs. Lombardo died in 1977. But I knew the sources were out there, because I knew there were stories like the one about this distant cousin of ours., Hobbs, who teaches American history at Stanford University, started by reading literature and going through the correspondence of Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, picking out the gossip they exchanged about themselves and their acquaintances passing for white. Lombardos band played Auld Lang Syne just as the clock struck midnight. When historians have taken on the subject, Hobbs points out, they have generally paid far more attention to what was gained by passing as white than to what was lost by rejecting a black racial identity. Hobbs, on the other hand, insists on seeing the history of passing as a coherent and enduring narrative of loss. We hear from the black family left behind. He remained close to the other Harlans but never tried to take on their whiteness. 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. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. 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. All rights reserved. They seemed to grow even closer as our once large family became smaller and summer family reunions petered out. That was the bombshell, the offhand remark that plunged historian Allyson Hobbs, AM'02, PhD'09, 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. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. miscegenation) and ends up castrated and murdered. Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Stanford University. It is fair to wonder if each of Hobbss subjects from Elsie Roxborough to Jean Toomer to Albert and Thyra Johnston would have had an easier time had they been born today, in the era of Barack Obama and Tiger Woods. 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. She has served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in history and as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Allyson Hobbs is elected Class of 1997's chief marshal Author, scholar and educator is a prominent voice on race, politics "My connection to Harvard is fundamental to who I am today," said Allyson Hobbs '97, who will serve as chief marshal. 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. Ten or 15 years later, her cousin got what Hobbs calls an inconvenient phone call. Her father was dying. Certainly there is increasingly a language for mixed identity. Internal Mail Code: 2152 She is a contributing writer to. He saw race as superficial, a physical covering, and argued for an American identity that could not extricate its black elements from its white components. In this critically vigilant work, Hobbs refuses to accept any one identity as true. Toomer, in his resistance to being pigeonholed, comes across here as not so much self-loathing as ahead of his time. What did she feel like when she hung up the phone? Hobbs asks. 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. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. Building 200, Room 113 As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. My father slowly takes off his glasses and dabs his eyes. 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. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. Now hes telling their storiesand his own. I am in a small boat, too fatigued to pick up an oar, lost at sea. They would say, Well, I really dont know much about this relative or that relative. Or, I dont know that much about my fathers side because this person passed as white and we never heard from them again, Hobbs says. Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. 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. But my mother wasnt joking. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and . 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. As her long-suffering mother puts it, How do you tell a child that she was born to be hurt?, To her credit, Hobbs isnt interested in reviving this tragic mulatto archetype. 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. Remember that, Joyce? he asks my mother. My father, who dreamed of attending the University of Chicago, took great pride in wearing the jacket. Hobbs said she realized while at Harvard that a university would be my professional home. Chan School of Public Health celebrates opening of $25M Thich Nhat Hanh Center for research, approaches to mindfulness, Women who suppressed emotions had less diverse microbiomes in study that also found specific bacterial link to happiness, Tenn. lawmaker Justin Pearson, Parkland survivor David Hogg 23 talk about tighter gun control, GOP attempts to restrict voting rights, importance of local politics, Dangers involved in rise of neurotechnology that allows for tracking of thoughts, feelings examined at webinar, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. And with that Albert and Thyra began the journey toward blackness again. Because people who passed obviously guarded their tracks and tried to leave no trace. In the past I have attempted to alert people to my identity in advance. 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. 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. A secret in her own family led Allyson Hobbs, AM02, PhD09, to uncover the hidden history of racial passing. She committed suicide in 1949. 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. Many of the songs are from the road trip playlists. An annual travelogue called The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide helped African Americans navigate their journeys with listings of tourist homes, hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barbershops, nightclubs, and service stations where they would be welcomed. Hobbs earned her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. 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. An older boy would steal the jacket before its leather sleeves had the chance to crease. Elsie changed her name to Mona Manet and wrote Hughes a letter bearing no return address stating that she intended to cease being colored. When she committed suicide years later, only her white-appearing relatives showed up to claim her body, allowing Elsie to remain white, even in death.. But the cousin, of course, wasnt there. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Now Im mourning people who are still alive. I think of my friends whose parents divorced when they were children or teenagers. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Graves Award in the Humanities, and the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Lifehas beenselected as: Winner, Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for Best First Book in American History (Organization of American Historians), Winner, Lawrence Levine Prize for Best Book in American Cultural History (Organization of American Historians), ANew York TimesBook ReviewEditors Choice, 2017 Summer Reading Lists for The Paris Reviewand Harvard University Press, Recommended Reading on "Racial Boundaries" by theNew York Times, ASan Francisco ChronicleBest Book of 2014, ATimes Higher EducationBook of the Week, The Root, Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014, 450 Jane Stanford Way She has won teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Graves Award in the Humanities, and the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. As she puts it, there is no essentialized, immutable or true identity . Inside the Home of the New Years Eve Ball, A Hundred Years Later, The Birth of a Nation Hasnt Gone Away, Our Fifteen Most-Read Magazine Stories of 2015. Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (191095) illuminated stellar evolution. 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. One of the loved ones Hobbs lost helped spark her current book project, a study of the Great Migration through the experiences of travelers heading north through a segregated country. Only her sister and aunt, both light skinned, traveled to New York to claim her body. 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. Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? My fathers grandmother had served the white folks at dinner parties, so she took great pride in making her own celebrations equally special. "Perhaps . This collaboration never fails to fill me with joy., She called writing her thesis about the Highlander Folk School, nestled in the mountains of Tennessee, transformative. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. Stanford University, Main Quad I lined the house with outdoor lights and hired a musician to lead the group in caroling. Despite the tradition of activism by black women, white women have often played the protagonists in the history of sexual violence, and black women have been relegated to the supporting cast. The phrase Auld Lang Syne translates to times gone by, and, while Americans expect to hear this song every New Years, few know what the Scottish lyrics actually mean. 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. Photo credit: Jennifer Pottheiser Photography. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/parents-divorce.html. 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. Though scholars have widely argued that Toomer passed as white, Hobbs depicts him as not so much rejecting blackness as rejecting racialized thinking. 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. One of the best birthday presents anybody ever gave me was a calling card by the conceptual artist Adrian Piper. Their stately home served as the community hub, and there they raised their four children, who believed they were white. She felt close to their pain; she almost grieved with them. Because theyre so much a part of the story. That story opens Hobbss book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), a lyrical, searching, and studious account of the phenomenon from the mid-19th century to the 1950s. In letters, unpublished family histories, personal papers, sociological journals, court cases, anthropological archives, literature, and film, she finds a coherent and enduring narrative of loss.. My father cant go back to the Chicago of the nineteen-fifties. 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. She gave a TEDx talk at Stanford, she has appeared on C-Span, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and her work has been featured on cnn.com, slate.com, and in the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times.Allysons first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in October 2014, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. 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. Lombardo brought in the new year with the song for almost fifty years, from the stock market crash in 1929 to his last performance, during the countrys bicentennial, in 1976. 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.