Untangling a hidden life
The New York Times' book critic Janet Maslin named "Passing Strange" one of the top 10 books of the year, calling it "a fine, mesmerizing account of how one extremely secretive man … could encapsulate his country's shifting ideas about race." The film rights to the book have been optioned by HBO.
Born in 1842, Clarence King was raised in Newport by parents of old American stock and was educated at Yale University. He became famous in his 20s as the leader of the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, which mapped the West. Later he was the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, a close friend of historian Henry Adams and a much-admired dinner guest at society parties in New York.
At the age of 46, King married Ada Copeland, who was then working in New York as a children's nursemaid, in a religious ceremony at her aunt's house. (Since there was no civil ceremony, it is considered a common-law marriage.) Ada, 19 years his junior, lived with their children in Brooklyn and later Queens, attributing her husband's long absences to his job as a Pullman porter, a position held exclusively by black men. King kept his secret well hidden. Sandweiss never found a photo of the couple together or any photos of King with his children.
King's ability to conceal a black wife and children who lived in the same city was only possible because of New York's unique attributes, Sandweiss said.
"New York had segregated neighborhoods and excellent public transportation," she pointed out. King lived as a bachelor in all-white gentleman's clubs in Manhattan, and hopped on the streetcar when he wanted to visit his family in another borough.
But the most amazing part of King's story is that someone with fair hair and blue eyes was accepted as a black man. He managed it, Sandweiss said, because of the so-called "one-drop" laws passed in the South during Reconstruction, which declared that someone with one black great-grandparent was considered legally black.
"The laws were meant to make it very difficult to move from one racial category to the other," Sandweiss said. "Ironically, they made it very possible to do that, because you could claim an ancestry -- or more often hide an ancestry -- that was invisible in the color of your skin."
AT LEFT: This 1879 photo of Clarence King was taken while he served as director of the United States Geological Survey. (Photo: Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library) AT RIGHT Ada Copeland King, pictured in 1933, is accompanied by her son, Wallace, whose father was Clarence King. (Photo: Courtesy of the New York Daily News)
King finally confessed to his wife and family by letter in 1901 from Arizona, where he died of tuberculosis. Ada, who died in 1964 at the age of 103, was one of the last living former slaves in the United States.
Sandweiss' research led her to a living relative of Ada's who had known her well -- her great-granddaughter, Patricia Chacon, who shared memories and photos of Ada.
Anxiety about race continued to play a significant role in the lives of the couple's descendants. Their two daughters married as white, each vouching for the other's racial identity at city hall, "which meant they had to leave their mother at home, because she was dark-complected," Sandweiss said. Their granddaughter, Thelma, whom Ada raised, married a white man who, according to Sandweiss' book, "hinted that her mixed racial heritage should remain a secret. ... Anxious about what her own children might look like, Thelma adopted two white infants in the 1950s."
"The vexing problem of race stalked this family for many years," Sandweiss said.
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I'm an ordained priestess
He was pro-black and pan-african. Rastas by default are pro-black.
. He was an equal opportunity dater and didn't take sides.
