The Strange Career of William Ellis

April 25, 2016
In vivid and lyrical prose, Jacoby (Crimes Against Nature), a professor of
history at Columbia University, recounts the extraordinary life of 19th-century African-American entrepreneur William Henry Ellis, a man born into slavery who became a figure of great wealth and influence in both the U.S. and Mexico. Jacoby emphasizes Ellis’s individual achievements as well as his adroit manipulation of Gilded Age America’s confused and contradictory ideas about race. While many African-Americans hoped to escape American racial prejudices by passing as white, Ellis shrewdly took advantage of his countrymen’s racial ignorance beyond the black-white binary by presenting himself as a Mexican, a Cuban, and even an indigenous Hawaiian. These racial masquerades served him well on Wall Street, where he built his vast fortune, but should not be seen as a repudiation of his heritage, Jacoby argues. Throughout his life, Ellis maintained contact with his black-identified relatives and attempted to improve the options for Americans of color at the onset of the Jim Crow era by encouraging Southern black men and women to migrate to Mexico. Jacoby deftly analyzes the divergent ways in which racial identities developed on both sides of the Mexican-American border and reminds his readers that “we all inhabit a mestizo, mulatto America.” Illus.

April 15, 2016
A remarkable historical detective story that unearths the life and times of a "trickster" African-American who was able to "pass," and strive spectacularly, as Latino. During a time of deep racial anxiety in the United States--just after the Civil War and through the 1920s--the "color bar" was deeply pronounced and enforced in all aspects of society, from travel to public establishments to housing to marriage. Jacoby (History/Columbia Univ.; Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History, 2008, etc.) delves minutely into this unsettling history of racial relations through the life of nimble businessman William Henry Ellis, aka Guillermo Enrique Eliseo--born in 1864 to biracial slaves in Victoria, Texas--whose olive skin and facility with Spanish allowed him to move freely between the porous U.S.-Mexico border and reinvent himself in an extraordinary manner. Ellis' ability to pass as Mexican or Cuban (or even Hawaiian) while on business above and below the border is only one facet of this fascinating story. He rode in first-class cars, stayed at length in the British-owned Hotel Gillow in Mexico City, built a trading firm on Wall Street, and married a white woman. Ellis was surely a kind of confidence man, but he was also a crusader for his race and became embroiled in Republican politics in the 1880s, cooking up a scheme to recolonize African-American tenant farmers from the cotton-picking South to a huge tract of land in northern Mexico during a time of profound labor shortages in Mexico, where racial relations were far less fraught than in America. Jacoby imparts important, unknown aspects of Mexican-American history and does a stellar feat of research in weaving together this fragmented life as just one incredible example of the American experience in all its complexity and ingenuity. An amazing tale that is indeed "almost too strange to be true."

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 15, 2016

Jacoby (history, Columbia Univ.; Crimes Against Nature) relates the fascinating tale of William Ellis, who was born into slavery on a cotton plantation in rural Texas just before the end of America's Civil War, and his fascinating transition into Guillermo Eliseo, a wealthy broker, statesman, and politician from Mexico. How this strange account of reinvention came to be makes for an important book because of Jacoby's discussion of racial fluidity and Ellis's flouting of racial codes during Reconstruction and the years after. Ellis/Eliseo's crossing of the color line in an era of racial tension is deftly contrasted with Mexico's post-Independence acceptance of the mixing of ethnic groups. Ellis/Eliseo's business acumen and gift with languages comes into focus as the narrative traces his involvement in statesmanship, plans for colonizing African Americans in Mexico, and business dealings with powerful investors. VERDICT Jacoby's masterly writing places race and its meaning at the center of this essential work. Readers will gain fresh insight into life during Reconstruction as well as the riddle of racial identities.--Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
William Ellis was born into slavery in Victoria, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. During his relatively short life, he rubbed elbows with the most powerful men of his generation, including those within Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz's inner circle and men within President Theodore Roosevelt's coterie. He also traveled from Mexico City to Wall Street to Alabama to Ethiopia. Ellis found it useful to create an alter-ego, Guillermo Eliseo, a persona with a life story that shifted according to circumstances, as he passed as Mexican, Cuban, even Hawaiian. Through this trickster's story, historian Jacoby (Shadows at Dawn, 2008) brings a welcome and nuanced perspective to the racial history of the U.S. as well as a textured examination of the legacy of distrust between the United States and Mexico. He demonstrates that we inhabit a mestizo, mulatto America, and shines light on the feeble construct of race and the inadequacy of facile analyses that continue to plague this country. Ellis' life is also a cracking good story, illustrated with intriguing photos and helpful maps topped off by an emotionally satisfying epilogue.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)