Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Martha A. Sandweiss
New York: Penguin Press, 2009
Rare Book Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

In Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, American historian Martha A. Sandweiss documents the life of Clarence King, a celebrated scientist and explorer of the nineteenth century, especially his secret marriage. King came from a prominent, wealthy white family, yet he lived a double life under the name James Todd, passing as a Black man to pursue a common law marriage with the Black nursemaid Ada Copeland. The couple were married from 1888 until his death in 1901 and had five children. King did not tell Copeland about his actual identity until he was on his deathbed. Sandweiss meticulously researched King and Copeland, yet she approaches the subject with an understanding that much of their interpersonal relationship will always be unknown.

Passing typically involves people from a disadvantaged group adopting an identity that moves them toward greater legal and social privilege. In the highly segregated America of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, passing was commonly associated with African Americans passing as white to be seen as part of the legally protected majority. It is far less common for someone who is part of the protected majority to pass as someone in a minority group, as in the case of Clarence King. Although this act did not earn King any financial or social capital, it did help him legally subvert laws prohibiting interracial marriage, which were in effect in over half the states during King’s lifetime. These anti-miscegenation laws were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in 1967.