The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White
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—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello
In America, race is a riddle. The stories we tell about our past have calcified into the fiction that we are neatly divided into black or white. It is only with the widespread availability of DNA testing and the boom in genealogical research that the frequency with which individuals and entire families crossed the color line has become clear.
In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three families who represent the complexity of race in America and force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in the South Carolina backcountry who became white in the 1760s, ascending to the heights of the Southern elite and ultimately to the U.S. Senate. The Spencers were hardscrabble farmers in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, joining an isolated Appalachian community in the 1840s and for the better part of a century hovering on the line between white and black. The Walls were fixtures of the rising black middle class in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., only to give up everything they had fought for to become white at the dawn of the twentieth century. Together, their interwoven and intersecting stories uncover a forgotten America in which the rules of race were something to be believed but not necessarily obeyed.
Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved-how the very meaning of black and white changed-over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.
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Daniel J. Sharfstein. (2011). The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Daniel J. Sharfstein. 2011. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey From Black to White. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Daniel J. Sharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey From Black to White. Penguin Publishing Group, 2011.
MLA Citation (style guide)Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey From Black to White. Penguin Publishing Group, 2011.
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- "The Invisible Line" shines light on one of the most important, but too often hidden, aspects of American history and culture. Sharfstein's narrative of three families negotiating America's punishing racial terrain is a must read for all who are interested in the construction of race in the United States."
—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello
In America, race is a riddle. The stories we tell about our past have calcified into the fiction that we are neatly divided into black or white. It is only with the widespread availability of DNA testing and the boom in genealogical research that the frequency with which individuals and entire families crossed the color line has become clear.
In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three families who represent the complexity of race in America and force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in the South Carolina backcountry who became white in the 1760s, ascending to the heights of the Southern elite and ultimately to the U.S. Senate. The Spencers were hardscrabble farmers in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, joining an isolated Appalachian community in the 1840s and for the better part of a century hovering on the line between white and black. The Walls were fixtures of the rising black middle class in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., only to give up everything they had fought for to become white at the dawn of the twentieth century. Together, their interwoven and intersecting stories uncover a forgotten America in which the rules of race were something to be believed but not necessarily obeyed.
Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved-how the very meaning of black and white changed-over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights. - reviews
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November 1, 2010
The story of the wealthy Gibsons of Colonial South Carolina, the farming Spencers of 19th-century Kentucky, and the middle-class Walls of post-Civil War Washington, DC, and each family's shifting self-identity from black to white.
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from February 15, 2011
Many persons of African American heritage but white appearance crossed the color line at times when racial classification had very real and harsh implications. Legal scholar Sharfstein chronicles the lives of three such families who made the transition from black to white during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Gibsons started as landowners in South Carolinas backcountry and became wealthy slaveholders and part of the southern elite, producing a senator and a major figure in American commerce. The Spencers owned farmland in eastern Kentucky and eventually Appalachia, scratching out a life as part of an isolated community, in which families were loathe to set hard racial definitions until coal mining and outsiders pressed the broader social mores of the U.S. The Walls gravitated to postCivil War Washington, DC, and became part of the black elite that challenged racial restrictions until they could no longer resist the temptation to take advantage of the escape their fair skin afforded them. Drawing on archival material, Sharfstein constructs an absorbing history, demonstrating the fluidity and arbitrariness of racial classification.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
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December 1, 2010
Sharfstein (law, Vanderbilt Univ.) presents the saga of three families from the American South who demonstrated, in their quest for acceptance and success, the mutability of the social construct of race. The Gibsons, originally landowners from South Carolina, attained recognition as whites in the 1760s; the Spencers, Kentucky subsistence farmers, alternated between the designations of white and black; and the Walls, part of the challenged black middle class in Washington, DC, chose to pass the early 20th century as largely anonymous whites. Using archival and published records, the author details the experiences and social climates of family members. Readers realize how presumably millions of people may have similarly crossed the often permeable color line, fostering a complex, dynamic social migration that sometimes accompanied geographic movement. Sharfstein asserts that race in America involves stories of accommodation and assimilation by those of African descent, similar to European immigrants. VERDICT This annotated book, enhanced by its almost lyrical prose, explores questions of elective identity, usually based on wealth, behavior, and reputation, rather than color, as well as the often tumultuous events that led to historical and personal compromises. American social history scholars, genealogists, and general readers who wish to learn through vivid case studies will be interested. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/10.]--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello
In America, race is a riddle. The stories we tell about our past have calcified into the fiction that we are neatly divided into black or white. It is only with the widespread availability of DNA testing and the boom in genealogical research that the frequency with which individuals and entire families crossed the color line has become clear.
In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three families who represent the complexity of race in America and force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in... - sortTitle
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