The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America
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One of the most persistent of the myths that Americans tell themselves about race is that the line between black and white is a matter of genetics rather than choice. Law professor and historian Daniel Sharfstein, with his book The Invisible Line, delved into the dramatic stories of three black families who responded to times of great racial upheaval by seizing opportunities to reinvent themselves as white. Sharfstein found an antebellum Southern family that – after covertly crossing the line from black to white – became wealthy sugar planters, slaveholders, and ardent Confederates.
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Introducing the C.V Starr Center’s new deputy director: Ted Maris-Wolf! Maris-Wolf’s talk about nearly three thousand enslaved Africans who were seized from slave ships by the U.S. Navy illuminates a crucial moment in history, when an otherwise indifferent president launched the nation’s strongest-ever attack on the international slave trade.
Maris-Wolf, who will join the Starr Center full-time in May, is currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. His work has focused on law, race, and the idea of freedom in 19th century America, as well as on runaway slave communities, the transatlantic slave trade, and the threads of history and memory that connect the United States with the Caribbean and West Africa. -
As part of the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs, Dan Holler ‘05 spoke in the Alumni House about getting a job as Communications Director for the Heritage Foundation, a prominent DC think tank. working in professional politics or advocacy. Afterwards, he gave a public lecture on the Republican presidential primaries in Hynson Lounge entitled “Breaking all the Rules: The GOP Primary.” -
On May 3 in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, C.V. Starr Center director Adam Goodheartread from his New York Times best-seller, 1861: The Civil War Awakening. Officially released April 5, the book has already garnered critical acclaim and widespread media attention, and graced the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Goodheart has recently appeared on panels with filmmaker Ken Burns and noted historians James McPherson of Princeton and David Blight of Yale, and will be giving talks and readings at universities and cultural institutions across the country in the months ahead.Goodheart’s reading was sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the Rose O’Neill Literary House and the Washington College Department of History. A book signing followed the talk.
