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

Written by Martha A. Sandweiss

Narrated by Lorna Raver

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 was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life-as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada King, only on his deathbed.

Martha A. Sandweiss, a noted historian of the American West, is the first writer to uncover the life that King tried so hard to conceal from the public eye. She reveals the complexity of a man who while publicly espousing a personal dream of a uniquely American "race," an amalgam of white and black, hid his love for his wife and their five biracial children. Passing Strange tells the dramatic tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race-from the "Todd's" wedding in 1888 to the 1964 death of Ada, one of the last surviving Americans born into slavery, and finally to the legacy inherited by Clarence King's granddaughter, who married a white man and adopted a white child in order to spare her family the legacies of racism.

A remarkable feat of research and reporting spanning the Civil War to the civil rights era, Passing Strange tells a uniquely American story of self-invention, love, deception, and race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781400181513

Reviews for Passing Strange

[Meg's Bookish Ramblings · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall, it was an interesting book though I am really curious as to what Ada's back story is more so than King's.

I did enjoy reading about his adventures and the strides he made in his field.

[newsieq · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unusual tale of a well-known scientist, explorer and government official leading a double life in late 19th Century New York -- passing for black to marry a woman born a slave in Georgia. Unearthing this story was no easy feat for the author, who had tried to encourage her students to tackle the job themselves, before deciding to give it a try. Although Clarence King's life was well documented, fleshing out Ada Copeland was more difficult. Scant documents are available for people born into slavery. But using census and court records -- along with large dose of informed speculation -- the author makes Ada and the love story come to life. Any genealogist who has tried to track down information about elusive ancestors will find the author's determination to present a balanced account amazing. Written in a straightforward style without footnotes to interrupt the narrative, Passing Strange is an easy and interesting read for those of who are not historians. But extensive back notes provide all the documentation anyone could ask for. I'm going to suggest this one for the non-fiction readers' group at my library.02/03/2009

[lukerik-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“To see her walk across a room, you would think someone had tilted up a coffin on end and propelled the corpse spasmodically forward.”So not his type then. As it turns out, Clarence King would take a Cockney barmaid at a pinch, but he preferred Black women. And who can blame him? What we have here is a double biography of King, geologist and generally famous white man, and Ada Copeland, his secret African American wife, whom he deceived during their entire marriage into thinking he was a black man called James Todd.King was an unusual and interesting man and his life is well documented in his own words, those of his friends and the media of the time. In telling his story, Sandweiss opens a window onto the history of the Wild West and growing industrialisation. With Copeland the situation is almost entirely reversed. Nothing survives of her personal voice beyond a few official documents and to infer something of her early life, Sandweiss has to tell the story of the end of slavery and the fall-out from it.The story of their life (or half-life) together is interesting enough, but what makes this book really fascinating is the light it sheds on American conceptions of race and the fundamental societal dysfunction that results from such confusions. This is not always a happy book. It brought home to me just how close close slavery is in historical terms. Here we are in a world where an African American man can step out of his house to buy tobacco and be murdered in the street by the sheriff’s posse over a matter of twenty dollars. And when you consider that Copeland died in 1963, it is possible to speak to someone today who spoke to a woman who was born a slave in the American south.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Clarence King, the founder of the US Geological Service and a best-selling author, was the literally fair-haired child (also blue-eyed) of an impoverished but impeccably socially credentialed New York family. Yale-educated, he was widely considered by his set—which included people like Henry Adams—to be the brightest, most charming person they knew. He was also, in his later life, posing as James Todd, a Pullman porter, in order to be married to Ada Copeland, a black woman with whom he had several children. His few surviving letters to her speak of great love, while his writings through his life show a fetishization of nonwhite women as more authentic and natural; the book suggests that both could have been accurate. The book has to do a lot of imagining—there are almost no records of Copeland because of racism and sexism, and almost no records of King’s life as Todd because he deliberately hid that life from his white friends, and he was able to do so because he was a white man who could move freely throughout the US and between rich white New York and the socially and geographically distinct African-American middle class New York. Racism enabled a blond, blue-eyed man to be black if he said he was (and if he was married to a more phenotypically common “black” woman), because who would say he was if he wasn’t? (Though interestingly, Pullman porters were required to be very dark-skinned to give the proper image of deference, so his claim about his profession wouldn’t have been persuasive to African-Americans who knew more about Pullman.) Sexism and racism meant that King’s first biographer didn’t bother to interview Copeland Todd, who was alive when he wrote, because he didn’t think she was important to King’s real story. So now we’ll never know a lot about how they thought about what they did; we know only this much because Copeland Todd ultimately sued to get the benefits of a trust she believed King had set up from her (he revealed the truth to her in a letter he sent shortly before his death).

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating story. Recommended for those interested in race relations and American history. The book is a bit longer than it should be; the tale could have been told more straightforwardly. But recommended nonetheless.

[christineellei · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

From the book description, “Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth century western history; a brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War. Secretary of State John Hay named King “the best and brightest of his generation.” But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steel worker named James Todd. The fair blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common- law wife, Ada Copeland, only on his deathbed.”

I had never heard of Clarence King. I came across his story and it sounded so intriguing that I felt I had to read this book. I am very glad I did. The story of his accomplishments was interesting enough, but the entire story of his double life was truly fascinating. The author obviously researched this book very well and the history she gives us with regards Ada Copeland was eye-opening.

[jcambridge_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book deserves a much wider audience among Library Thing members. A love story, a detective story, and a tale of deception that demonstrates that truth is stranger than fiction. I am surprised it has not been adapted for a movie -- Clarence King was an important figure in American history and the fact he was living a double life makes this compelling reading!

[samsattler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Historians, and history itself, have not treated Clarence King kindly. King was at one time one of the most famous and admired people in the United States but, if you are like me, you likely have never heard of the man. Born into a wealthy family in 1842, King became famous as the geologist responsible for surveying and mapping diverse regions of the western United States. Always the self-promoter, he published a book about his adventures, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada," that became a best seller of its day and made him into a national figure. Two of his closest friends were author Henry Adams and career politician John Hay, former secretary to President Abraham Lincoln. King traveled in the highest circles of society, even dining in the White House on at least once occasion.All of which makes even more astonishing the fact that Clarence King lived a secret life that even his closest confidants knew nothing of until King was near death or had actually passed. King’s friends were well aware that King, the sole support of his elderly mother and an extended family, was hard pressed to meet his financial obligations. His financial difficulties were so serious, in fact, that King was only able to maintain his standard of living by accepting repeated loans from John Hay and others of his friends, often offering items from his personal art collection as collateral for the money loaned to him. What King’s benefactors and admirers did not know was that, for some thirteen years, King was living two lives: one as the famous explorer of the American West and another as the husband of a woman who, in 1861, had been born into slavery in Georgia. King represented himself to ex-slave Ada Copeland as James Todd, an extremely light-skinned black man from Baltimore whose work as a Pullman porter required him to be away from home for months at a time. In a day in which a single drop of black blood was deemed to distinguish a black man from a white one, his story was believable enough for King to be accepted into the community in which Ada bore him five children.Clarence King loved Ada Copeland but he lied about their relationship because he feared the scandal that would result from his marriage to a black woman. He knew that by publicly acknowledging his black wife and mixed-race children he would lose his friends and any chance of earning the income necessary to support either of his families. Although Ada may have suspected that her husband had something to hide, even she did not know the extent of her husband’s secrets until his confessional deathbed letter.Clarence King’s story is a fascinating one and Martha Sandweiss tells it well. Almost as fascinating is what happened to Ada and her children after King’s death. Ada, who lived to be 103 years old, did not die until 1964, outliving her husband by sixty-two years. "Passing Strange" includes an account of her determined effort during the 1930s to be recognized as King’s rightful heir and the resulting court case that explains much of what happened after his death.If this were a movie, no one would believe it.Rated at: 5.0