Guest post by Martha A. Sandweiss, Author of NBCC finalist Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Researching and writing Passing Strange presented many challenges, not the least of which was making my two main protagonists – Clarence King and Ada Copeland – equally vivid characters in the book.
King’s life is well-documented in the historical record. An intrepid explorer and brilliant geologist, he led the fortieth Parallel Survey that helped map the West in the years following the Civil War and in 1879 became the first director of the United States Geological Survey. A talented essayist and celebrated wit, he made his mark among the elites of Gilded Age New York and Washington. His close friend, the Secretary of State John Hay, called him the “best and brightest man of his generation.”
But for thirteen years, King led a double life of which his friends knew nothing, a life so carefully crafted that it left behind few traces in the historical record. And that double life is the focus of my book.
From 1888 until his death in 1901, King – descendent of an old blue-blood Newport family – lived a secret life as a black Pullman porter named James Todd. He revealed his true identity to his African American wife, Ada Copeland Todd, only on his deathbed.
I had to untangle many mysteries about this marriage between a a black woman and white man. Why would King pretend to be black? Why would his wife believe he WAS black? How could this fair-complected man sustain his complicated racial masquerade for such a long time? But first I had to figure out who Ada Copeland really was.
In the beginning, I could find only her name, her approximate birthdate (1860) and her place of birth. Further research into West Point, Georgia, suggested that any black child born there in 1860 was almost certainly born into slavery. But the system of slavery itself ensured that the young Ada would have no birth certificate, no surname as a young child, no documents that recorded the names of her parents. How could I begin to understand her experience or learn more about her?
A few years ago, I traveled to West Point, Georgia, to attend the annual family reunion of the extended black Copeland clan. It was an extraordinary experience for me. In a small country church, some 150 family members had gathered to worship, celebrate and reminisce. The preacher welcomed me and then invited me up to the front and handed over the microphone. I had not expected this! But classroom teaching prepares one for just about anything. I introduced myself, explained that I was working on a book about one of their family members, and invited folks to share their stories with me over lunch. But no one had heard any family tales about the young girl named Ada who had left the family so long ago, in the 1880s, to seek her fortune in New York.
In New York, all traces of Ada Copeland Todd King seemed to fade after 1933 when she pressed (and lost) her case in court to obtain control of the trust fund she believed her husband had left to her and their four children. In the New York Public Library, I went through volume after volume of death records, trying to figure out when she died. But I could find no trace of her, and once I got to the records for 1960 – by which time she would have been an improbable 100 years old – I just gave up. I concluded she must have died somewhere else.
I decided to try to track down her children and grandchildren. This time I had more luck, by following the journalists’ old adage to “follow the money.” Working with a former student, I tracked down the property transfer records for the home where Ada King had lived in the 1930s. These gave me the married names for her grand-daughter and great grand-daughter. A quick check of the records showed that the granddaughter was no longer alive, but I found an address for the great-granddaughter in suburban New York. My intrepid ex-student agreed to go knock on her door for me. “What shall I say?” he asked. I suggested he ask whether she was, in fact, the great-granddaughter of Ada King, and then explain that he was helping an historian write a book about her. No one was home the cold, sleety day my student knocked on that door, but he scribbled a note on a piece of paper and shoved it under her door. The next day, when I got to my office, I had a phone message from a woman identifying herself as the great-granddaughter of Ada King. Call me, she said. She had been up all night thinking about this.
In our first phone conversation we talked for at least an hour. And from the outset, I was stunned, this woman – who is more or less my age – had vivid memories of Ada King. How could that be? It turns out that Ada King lived until 1964. She was 103 when she died, one of the last remaining Americans to have been born into slavery. When I searched for her death certificate, I had not searched far enough.
A story that seemed to reside in the distant past was suddenly very much alive. Now I was talking to someone who could tell me what Ada King read and cooked, could recount her favorite sayings, could describe the inside of her house. I had hit the historian’s equivalent of paydirt.
National Book Critics Circle finalist.
Paperback edition on sale January 26, 2010.
“Passing Strange tells an astounding true story that would beggar most novelists’ imaginations… A fine, mesmerizing account.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“[Sandweiss is] a curious, talented writer… she tells [Clarence King’s story] with a scholar’s rigor and a storyteller’s verve… A sophisticated work of scholarship.” —Columbia Journalism Review
“Passing Strange combines remarkable detective work, riveting storytelling, and the enduring question of race to fashion a most unusual but very American family saga about a famous white man and a heretofore unknown black woman. This book is a stunning achievement and example of just how deeply race is woven into our history, our imaginations, and our lives. Ada Copeland, who became a Todd, and then a King, rescued from obscurity by a talented historian, steals the show.” —David W. Blight, Yale University, and author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation
“Elaborate and incredible… Remarkable.” —Bookpage
“Sandweiss serves a delicious brew of public accomplishment and domestic intrigue… Fascinating.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“One of the best-known men of his time crosses the racial divide—in reverse. As Sandweiss notes in this sturdy work, which blends elements of social and intellectual history with biography, thousands of light-skinned blacks in that era tried to pass for white, but the number of those who did the opposite must have been tiny. An intriguing look at long-held secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Although Passing Strange reads like a suspenseful novel, it introduces us to a real American hero who lived a fascinating life on both sides of the color line. Sandweiss gives us a great lesson in American history that spans three generations.” —Lawrence Otis Graham, author of Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class
