Passing strange : a Gilded Age tale of love and deception across the color line /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Sandweiss, Martha A.
Imprint:New York : Penguin Press, 2009.
Description:370 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Subject:King, Clarence, -- 1842-1901.
King, Ada, -- 1860-1964.
King, Clarence, -- 1842-1901 -- Marriage.
King, Ada, -- 1860-1964.
King, Clarence, -- 1842-1901.
African Americans -- Race identity -- Case studies.
Passing (Identity) -- United States -- Case studies.
Married people -- United States -- Case studies.
Deception -- United States -- Case studies.
African American women -- Biography.
African American women.
African Americans -- Race identity.
Deception.
Marriage.
Married people.
Passing (Identity)
Race relations.
United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century.
New York (N.Y.) -- Biography.
New York (State) -- New York.
United States.
Biography.
Case studies.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/7680939
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781594202001
1594202001
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-358) and index.
Summary:Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth-century western history. Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, bestselling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent Newport family: for thirteen years he lived a double life--as the celebrated white Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker. Unable to marry the black woman he loved, the fair-haired, blue-eyed King passed as a Negro, revealing his secret to his wife Ada only on his deathbed. Historian Martha Sandweiss is the first writer to uncover the life that King tried so hard to conceal. She reveals the complexity of a man who, while publicly espousing a personal dream of a uniquely American amalgam of white and black, hid his love for his wife and their five biracial children.--From publisher description.