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. 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. 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. For 20 years, he was the town doctor and she was the center of the towns social world. Stanford, CA 94305Phone:(650) 736-6790Fax:(650) 723-8528Campus Map, Ph.D., University of Chicago, with distinction B.A., Harvard University, magna cum laude, 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. Flooded by my own sorrow and heartbreak, I found solace in my parents marriage: They were unbroken; their bond was indestructible. As an alumna, her service to Harvard has included interviewing prospective students, coordinating the Harvard Black Alumni Societys San Francisco chapter, and working on the Harvard College Fund Gift Committee for her Class 15th Reunion. She wanted her grandchildren to know that, even though they might live in a kitchenette in Chicagos overcrowded Black Belt, they were just as precious and just as cherished as the white children who lived in the prestigious neighborhoods of the North Shore. Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth Century America explores the violence, humiliation, and indignities that African American motorists experienced on the road and To Tell the Terrible, which examines black womens testimonies against and collective memory of sexual violence. All rights reserved. Of course not. Hobbss father remembers visiting the familys house once as a child and noticing how light skinned they all were, the parents and the children, and shethis cousinwas the most light skinned. Some years later, long after the phone call and the fathers death, one of the brothers died, and Hobbss father went to the funeral. 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. Stanford University, Main Quad Countless African Americans have passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. The after-dinner hustle and bustle do not disturb my fathers reverie. My father, who dreamed of attending the University of Chicago, took great pride in wearing the jacket. The book was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice, a Best Book of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a Book of the Week by the Times Higher Education in London. Stanford, CA 94305-2024%20history-info [at] stanford.edu ()target="_blank"Campus Map, Understanding the past to prepare for the future, Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program in History, Joint Degree in Law and History (J.D./Ph.D), Stanford Environmental and Climate History Workshop, Harvard University Press, Obama and the Paradigm Shift: Measuring Change, Concl. It won two prizes from the Organization of American Historians, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award for the best first book in American history and the Lawrence W. Levine Award for the best book in American cultural history, as well as other honors. During the 19th century, African Americans sometimes passed as white in order to pass as free, using their light complexions to elude slaveholders and slave hunters. My grandmother had told me incredible stories about the migration and moving to Chicago and her impressions of the journey, Hobbs says. And our cousinand this was the part of the story that my aunt really underscoredwas that our cousin absolutely did not want to do this, Hobbs says. The arrival of these two ostensibly white women allowed Elsie to remain white, even in death, Hobbs writes. Published continuously since 1907.AccessibilityPrivacy Policy, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide. Her sister had died from breast cancer when Hobbs was 22. 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 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. One story Hobbs tells is of Elsie Roxborough, a socialite who briefly dated Joe Louis and Langston Hughes, and who in 1937, after graduating from the University of Michigan, began passing as white to become a model. Married to Thyra in 1924, Albert graduated from medical school but couldnt get a job as a black doctor, and passed as white in order to gain entry to a reputable hospital. You know, we have that in our own family too. That was the bombshell, the offhand remark that plunged historian Allyson Hobbs, AM02, PhD09, 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. 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. And yet, as Hobbs reminds us, hybrid identities are still racial identities, and as our present moment unfolds, we are often left to wonder if we have seen this movie before., https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/books/review/a-chosen-exile-by-allyson-hobbs.html. 2023 Cond Nast. But they get the gist of the main question of the song: Should old friends be forgotten? A tradition was born. And surely youll buy your pint cup and surely Ill buy mine! 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. His family did not have much money, but, as he would later tell us with a smile, We didnt know we were poor. His grandmother cleaned the homes of white families and often came back to the apartment with stories of what the white folks do. Setting the Christmas table with her best china, she would turn to my father and my aunt and say, with satisfaction, This is the way the white folks do it. The world of the white folks was just as remote geographically as it was in imagination and in experience. Students' reflections on Allyson Hobbs' seminar, "On the Road: A History of Travel in Twentieth Century America," AMSTUD 109Q, The Great Migration, C-SPAN, "Lectures in History,"May 10, 2011. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth Century America, CCSRE 25th Anniversary Commemorative Book, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Ph.D. Minor in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, CSRE Ph.D. Minor Frequently Asked Questions, CSRE Graduate Teaching Fellowship Program, Technology & Racial Equity Graduate Fellowship, Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies, Annual Anne and Loren Kieve Distinguished Lecture. But my mother wasnt joking. Is it possible that it might be easier to live without each other by choice, to break that once indestructible bond now, rather than to wait until it is broken cruelly, against their will? 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 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. "Perhaps . I berate myself for such a nave hope. One of the best birthday presents anybody ever gave me was a calling card by the conceptual artist Adrian Piper. 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. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions. From left: a portrait; Jean Toomer Papers: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; The Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library. The car is cozy and my dad is singing again. For those few minutes that Auld Lang Syne plays, he is far away from the dining table in Morristown, New Jersey, where he has celebrated Christmas for the past thirty-five years. Her tragedy once again feels like mixed fate. I was in college at the time, and it felt like the ultimate inside joke handed from one racially ambiguous person to another. The core issue of passing is not becoming what you pass for, Hobbs writes in the prologue, but losing what you pass away from. Historians have tended to focus on the privileges and opportunities available to those with white identities. Her plan in part is to follow the Green Book. Hobbs book,A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores the phenomenon from the late 18th century to the present. But such was life for my father, growing up in Chicago back then. And the answer, of course, is no, the past must be remembered. 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. Ill remember my bright pink bedroom with curtains that my mom made from Benetton sheets. It tells a whole story about the highways and the ways that the creation of the highways destroyed a lot of black neighborhoods.. 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. 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. Hobbs 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 at Stanford. While the song absorbs my father, plates are cleared, dishes are washed, Uno cards are located, and new rules for the game are debated. Both of Hobbss parents came to Chicago as children during the Great Migration, her mother from New Orleans and her father from Augusta, Georgia. When his father died, his farm was on the brink of failure, and Burns and his brother moved the family to a new farm in an effort to stay afloat. 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. When my mother left our house in New Jersey, my father made two playlists for her with their favorite songs. As my mom, my sisters and I drifted off to sleep, hed croon: They said someday youll find/All who love are blind/Oh-oh when your hearts on fire/You must realize/Smoke gets in your eyes.. They cry as if these were their own parents. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker.com and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. Internal Mail Code: 2152 She served on the jury for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History. 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. In 2017, she was honored by the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP with a Freedom Fighter Award. 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. Because people who passed obviously guarded their tracks and tried to leave no trace. Highlights from the week in culture, every Saturday. I wont go back. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. An uncle who was an artist and spent long hours talking to Hobbs about the creative process. Their stately home served as the community hub, and there they raised their four children, who believed they were white. 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. Her father was dying, she could never come back, she would never see her brothers again., Over the next decade or so while she worked on her dissertation and then the book, Hobbs suffered her own series of losses as people close to her diedthe aunt who told her the story about the cousin and three first cousins who were like brothers and sisters to Hobbs. This time, he is doing his best imitation of Sam Cooke: Its been too hard living, oh my/And Im afraid to die/Cause I dont know whats up there/Beyond the sky/Its been a long, a long time coming/But I know a change is gonna come/Oh yes, it will.. I knew separate holidays would be unbearable, so I planned a holiday party that I rationalized as our familys Christmas. Opinion | When 80-Year-Old Parents Divorce - The New York Times She wanted to stay in Chicago; she didnt want to give up all her friends and the only life shed ever known. But her mother was resolved. One year, my grandmother splurged and bought my father a University of Chicago jacket for Christmas. Like so many of the people in her book, her own family tree has a gap. And she says to her mother, I cant come home. Hobbs earned her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. I wantedto get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death. I tell new friends, I wish you could have known my parents before. Look at these pictures look at their high school prom picture maybe you can understand. I thought, Ive really got to write about the people who were left behind, she says. This revelatory history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. As a first-year graduate student at the University of Chicago, Hobbs happened to mention to her aunt the subject of passing, a casual curiosity sparked by the Harlem Renaissance writers she was reading in school. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. But for every Elsie there is a Robert Harlan, light-skinned, straight-haired, who showed no interest in renouncing his blackness. As a respected historian and storyteller, teacher, and scholar, and community-builder, Allyson Hobbs has spent her career helping us understand racial injustice, its complex human cost, and how its history is something that links and impacts all of us, said Vanessa Liu, HAA president. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. ever waiting to be found just below the surface.. 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. The Root named A Chosen Exile among its Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014., 2023 Cond Nast. In June, she will lead the alumni parade as part ofHarvard Alumni Dayand host aspecial luncheon in Widener Library, where University leadership convene with a small group of alumni leaders and other dignitaries, including the Harvard Medalists and theAlumni Day featured speaker. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. The University of Chicago Magazine 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 Phone: 773.702.2163 Fax: 773.702.2166 uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu, The University of Chicago Magazine (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly by the University of Chicago in cooperation with the Alumni Association. Ten or 15 years later, her cousin got what Hobbs calls an inconvenient phone call. Her father was dying. I wonder if my parents marriage would have survived if my sister Sharon hadnt died from breast cancer at 31 in 1998. Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American womens history, and twentieth century American history. 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. 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. She has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC and National Public Radio. I am undone, untethered, dysfunctional. Her endless patience was wearing thin, her natural gentleness was hardening, and she seemed uncharacteristically annoyed. As this years chief marshal, Hobbs joins alistof illustrious alumni who have held the position, including former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith 94, who is this years featured Harvard Alumni Day speaker; astronaut Stephanie Wilson 88; Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Linda Greenhouse 68; City Year co-founder Alan Khazei 83; former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan 86; and former Rhode Island Gov. 'A Chosen Exile,' by Allyson Hobbs - The New York Times . Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. A Chosen Exilewon the Organization of American Historians Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in American history and the Lawrence Levine Prize for best book in American cultural history. The man whom my mom had loved since she was a teenager was now slower, unsteady and aging. 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. If I close my eyes, I am back in the car, and my head is resting on one of my sisters shoulders. . Joe Christmas, the tormented drifter in William Faulkners Light in August, considers his blackness evidence of original sin (a.k.a. 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. Hobbs also describes the upper-class Johnston family, who in the early 1900s became stalwarts of social and civic life in an all-white New Hampshire town. . Photo credit: Jennifer Pottheiser Photography. Allyson Hobbs 97, whose award-winning writing, scholarship, and teaching tackle the history and lasting impact of race in the U.S., will serve as this years chief marshal of alumni, the Harvard Alumni Association announced today. Another family will live in our house. Photo by Jessica Tampas Photography Date March 31, 2022 To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. It is also to be perpetually aware of both the primacy of race and the bankruptcy of the race idea, as Allyson Hobbs, an assistant professor of history at Stanford University, puts it in her incisive new cultural history, A Chosen Exile., Hobbs is interested in the stories of individuals who chose to cross the color line black to white from the late 1800s up through the 1950s. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. (now Secretary of Commerce) Gina M. Raimondo 93. My parents told the same stories of growing up on the South Side of Chicago hundreds of times. Every year, as the hour grows late on Christmas night, my fathers eyes become misty. Lombardo died in 1977. Following a tradition that goes back more than 120 years, Hobbs was elected by her classmates andwill play a number of ceremonial roles in celebration of their 25th reunion. Allyson is currently at work on two books, both forthcoming from Penguin Press. 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. 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. As a professor at Howard University, where he taught from 1934 to 1959, he asked his students to assemble family histories. I lined the house with outdoor lights and hired a musician to lead the group in caroling. Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (191095) illuminated stellar evolution.