Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin - Hardcover

Alexander, Adele Logan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813928877 ISBN 13: 9780813928876

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2010

Synopsis

When William Henry Hunt married Ida Alexander Gibbs in the spring of 1904, their wedding was a dazzling Washington social event that joined an Oberlin-educated diplomat's daughter and a Wall Street veteran who could trace his lineage to Jamestown. Their union took place in a world of refinement and privilege, but both William and Ida had mixed-race backgrounds, and their country therefore placed severe restrictions on their lives because at that time, "one drop of colored blood" classified anyone as a Negro. This "stain" of melanin pushed the couple's achievements to the margins of American society. Nonetheless, as William followed a career in the foreign service, Ida (whose grandfather was probably Richard Malcolm Johnson, a vice president of the United States) moved in intellectual and political circles that included the likes of Frederick Douglass, J. Pierpont Morgan, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Mary Church Terrell.

Born into slavery, William had an adventurous youth, including a brief career as a jockey and an interlude at Williams College; ultimately he succeeded Ida's father as consul. The diplomat's "expatriate" life provided him with a distinguished career and a stage on which to showcase his talents throughout the world, as well as an escape from racial stigmas back home. Free of the diplomatic hindrances her husband faced, Ida advocated openly against race and gender inequities, and was a major participant in W. E. B. Du Bois's post-World-War I Pan-African Congresses which took her to stimulating European capitals that were largely free of racial oppression.

In this, William and Ida's unique dual biography, Adele Logan Alexander gracefully traces an extraordinary partnership with a historian's skills and insights. She also presents a nuanced account of the complex impact of race in the early twentieth-century world.

About this title

About the Author

Adele Logan Alexander, Research Professor at George Washington University, was appointed by President Obama to serve on the National Council on the Humanities. She is the author of Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879 and Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926 and numerous articles and essays. Born and raised in New York City, she and her husband, Clifford Alexander, have two children, five grandchildren, and live in Washington, D. C.

Reviews

*Starred Review* William Hunt was the son of a slave and a man so fair-skinned he could have passed for white. Ida Gibbs-Hunt was the Oberlin-educated daughter of a peripatetic black businessman and diplomat, who took Hunt along as an assistant. After a 15-year friendship, Hunt and Gibbs married in 1904 and shared a long career in foreign service at a time when blacks were deemed unworthy of representing the U.S. abroad. Hunt served in Madagascar, France, Guadeloupe, and the Azores and ended his career in the 1930s in Liberia, by then considered the bumping ground for blacks in the foreign service. Gibbs-Hunt had a career in her own right as a writer and activist, championing the equal rights of women and African Americans. Alexander, a distant cousin of Gibbs-Hunt and married to Clifford Alexander, the first African American secretary of the army, offers a thoroughly fascinating look at the long but little-known history of blacks in the U.S. foreign service, as well as an intimate look at a prominent family ensconced in W. E. B. DuBois’ Talented Tenth. In fact, DuBois is among the stellar cast of acquaintances in the glittering and intellectual world of Hunt and Gibbs-Hunt, including Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Frederick Douglass, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. --Vanessa Bush

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813928877
• ISBN 13: 9780813928876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416