Questions of Race and Identity

[Shirley Durr]

NPR's American Lives: The 'Strange' Tale Of Clarence King is radio Interview with author Martha Sandweiss about her book. It is the true story of a white man who passed for black after falling in love with and marrying a freed slave in 1880's New York. He lived a double life in both the black world as Pullman porter James Todd and in the white world as Clarence King, a famous explorer; not even his wife knew he was white. The author "examines why King chose to live a double life —and how his experience reflects and represents how Americans, both past and present, have thought about race. In the aftermath of the Civil War, particularly, the U.S. had to recast some of the ways it thought about questions of race and identity."

[Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides]

Immediately, I'm reminded of the white man in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird who pretends he's a drunkard to offer his community a ready explanation for why he's married to a black woman. Sounds like this NPR article would offer a perfect pairing for Lee's text.

[Shirley Durr]

Yes. Good idea!