“I think of you and dream of you, and my first waking thought is of you”

June 30, 2023 2:23 AM

Driven by Love or Ambition, Slipping Across the Color Line Through the Ages by Rachel Swarns in the New York Times, a short account of the life of “Clarence King, a Yale-educated white man who worked as a geologist in the 1800s and dined at the White House, lived a secret life as James Todd, a black train porter with a wife and five children in Brooklyn.” Link via the substack of naturalist David B. Williams, who describes King’s discovery of glaciers in the Pacific West.
posted by bq (7 comments total)

Fascinating! Adding Passing Strange to the future reading list.

I'm reminded of the scene in Show Boat where Steve pricks the finger of his wife, a light-skinned Black woman who has been "passing" as White, and drinks her blood, so that he can truthfully say he "has Negro blood in him" and according to the one-drop rule their marriage won't be considered miscegenation.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:55 AM on June 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

I am confused by the choice not to point at bad guys in this story. Who was the friend and why did he refuse to pass on the trust fund for King’s wife and children?
posted by corb at 4:08 AM on June 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

Same question, corb.

This is written almost like a puff piece — it’s very “who knows?!” at a lot of turns where I wish the reporter had tried to find out who knew.
posted by gauche at 5:10 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It is very much a puff piece. It is clear that the King case comes out of the 2009 book that is mentioned:

“We’ll never know how many people did it,” said Martha A. Sandweiss, a historian at Princeton University who documented Mr. King’s double life for the first time in her book “Passing Strange,” which was published in 2009.

But, this short article does not clarify if those questions are answered in the book.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:14 AM on June 30, 2023

I would feel really betrayed if I married and had five children with a guy and then learned on his deathbed that he didn’t even share his real name with me.
posted by donut_princess at 6:22 AM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah it seems kind of awful really? If his wife knew and they just both pretended to their (Black) social circle to avoid trouble (and him losing his “white” job that supported the family) then it seems fine. But it seems a pretty intense betrayal if his wife didn’t know and it’s not excused by apparently having a dream for a less racist society. But it’s not clear what the reveal at deathbed was — just his name or also the whole double life?
posted by R343L at 7:11 AM on June 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments derailing the conversation deleted.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:36 AM on June 30, 2023