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The disparity between the ideal, a democratic America, and the reality, racial oppression and poverty, is so great that serious voices among blacks, students, and others challenged the ethical foundations of the nation in the 1960s. Local political organizations emerging out of black ghettos led a black revolt, asserting a revolutionary black nationalism rather than social reform and integration. For those blacks, white America could no longer dictate right and wrong, and certainly could no longer tell blacks how best to pursue their goals. This feeling was so strong among the adherents of the new militant movements formed under the political symbolism of "black power" that they questioned a...
Winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award "An American 'Odyssey,' the larger-than-life story of a man who travels far in the wake of war and gets by on his adaptability and gift for gab." —Wall Street Journal A black child born on the US-Mexico border in the twilight of slavery, William Ellis inhabited a world divided along ambiguous racial lines. Adopting the name Guillermo Eliseo, he passed as Mexican, transcending racial lines to become fabulously wealthy as a Wall Street banker, diplomat, and owner of scores of mines and haciendas south of the border. In The Strange Career of William Ellis, prize-winning historian Karl Jacoby weaves an astonishing tale of cunning and scandal, offering fresh insights on the history of the Reconstruction era, the US-Mexico border, and the abiding riddle of race in America.