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The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire Hardcover – Deckle Edge, June 14, 2016

by Karl Jacoby (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 145 ratings
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A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur.

To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: he was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in southern Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.

After emancipation, Ellis, capitalizing on the Spanish he learned during his childhood along the Mexican border and his ambivalent appearance, engaged in a virtuoso act of reinvention. He crafted an alter ego, the Mexican Guillermo Eliseo, who was able to access many of the privileges denied to African Americans at the time: traveling in first-class train berths, staying in upscale hotels, and eating in the finest restaurants.

Eliseo’s success in crossing the color line, however, brought heightened scrutiny in its wake as he became the intimate of political and business leaders on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Ellis, unlike many passers, maintained a connection to his family and to black politics that also raised awkward questions about his racial status. Yet such was Ellis’s skill in manipulating his era’s racial codes, most of the whites he encountered continued to insist that he must be Hispanic even as Ellis became embroiled in scandals that hinted the man known as Guillermo Eliseo was not quite who he claimed to be.

The Strange Career of William Ellis reads like a novel but offers fresh insights on the history of the Reconstruction era, the US-Mexico border, and the abiding riddle of race. At a moment when the United States is deepening its connections with Latin America and recognizing that race is more than simply black or white, Ellis’s story could not be more timely or important.

1 map; 8 pages of illustrations
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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    June 14, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    039323925X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393239256
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"How is it that a black man named William Ellis, living in Reconstruction-era Texas, could transform himself into a Mexican magnate and conquer Wall Street, then disappear into history without a trace? Fortunately, Karl Jacoby has done the detective work to bring this intriguing larger-than-life figure back to life, challenging America’s fixed concepts of race, ethnicity and national identity. This fascinating history book reads like a novel."
― Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures

"A masterpiece of border history. Jacoby has a biographer’s eye for detail and a detective’s talent for discovery, which he deftly uses to construct both the inner emotional life and larger social world of his subject. At once a history of the United States and of Mexico, Strange Career offers a truly transnational history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century North America. Today, as borders are simultaneously being dissolved and hardened, Jacoby’s study of Ellis’s exceptional career is as timely as it is compelling."
― Greg Grandin, author of Empire of Necessity and Fordlandia

"William Ellis was a chameleon, a trickster, and a man determined to shape his own identity. With enormous skill, Karl Jacoby uncovers this tremendous subject, revealing Ellis’s lies, and crafting a powerful new narrative about the porous borders of class, race, and national identity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American life. Deftly moving between the improbable details of Ellis’s biography and the larger political and cultural stories of the day, Jacoby demonstrates how one man’s life can help us understand the past in an entirely new way."
― Martha A. Sandweiss, professor of history, Princeton University, and author of Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

"Like all of his remarkable scholarship, Karl Jacoby’s The Strange Career of William Ellis takes an unexpected or little-known subject and, with great insight and imagination, uses it to shed new light on our larger past. He has excavated a life that began in obscurity and was ever being reinvented, and, in so doing, offers a deep understanding of the shifting boundaries of place, race, and social standing. An extraordinary story told with extraordinary skill."
― Steven Hahn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Nation under Our Feet

"[E]legantly written."
― Vladimir Alexandrov, San Francisco Chronicle

"[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. …Ellis’ life is also a cracking good story, illustrated with intriguing photos and helpful maps topped off by an emotionally satisfying epilogue."
― Sara Martinez, Booklist

"Fascinating… [an] important slice of American history."
― Karen M. Thomas, Dallas News

From the Publisher

  Winner of the 2017 Phillis Wheatley Award for nonfiction from the Harlem Book Fair  

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition (June 14, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 039323925X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393239256
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.38 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 145 ratings

About the author

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Karl Jacoby

Karl Jacoby

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Karl Jacoby is the Allan Nevins professor of history and ethnic studies at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, the novelist Marie Lee, and son, Jason.

With his students, he has created a companion website for Shadows at Dawn, available at: www.brown.edu/aravaipa

There is also a companion website for The Strange Career of William Ellis, with primary sources in English and Spanish, available at: www.williamhellis.com

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
145 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Linda W
5.0 out of 5 stars It's great book & fascinating history of the US and Mexico at the time of the Civil War, told through the life of William Ellis
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2016
Verified Purchase
This is a great read! It's a fun way to learn history and has relevant lessons for today. I'm from Texas and I learned a lot about the history of Texas and Mexico during the period right before and after the end of the Civil War. By painting a picture of those times through the life of William Ellis, the saga is personal and memorable. Issues like fluid racial lines during the era and movable cultural barriers come alive in the pages of this book. I did not understand that the Mexican constitution was written as a strong response against slavery. Ellis, born a slave, was a master at languages and cultures. His success –against all odds –was inspiring. Author Jacoby has woven the story together seamlessly and gave us a book that is a pleasure to read.
11 people found this helpful
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JBKing
4.0 out of 5 stars True story of how a Texas plantation slave reinvented himself as a wealthy and sophisticated Mexican tycoon.
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2016
Verified Purchase
Interesting look at a man, William Ellis, who transcended his birth and childhood as a plantation slave in south Texas to take on a persona of an elegant, successful Mexican entrepreneur. Mr. Jacoby provides a great deal of historical background into that time period and uses it to craft an amazing story. However, at times it felt a little overwhelming in scope. Well written and well edited (thank goodness!) this is a story that would be unbelievable if not backed up with so much historical proof.
22 people found this helpful
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Casper Mansfield
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book about the arbitrariness and obsession of race in the USA
Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2020
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book about Mr. Ellis, a man born just as slavery was ending. It examines the destructiveness of slavery and how lighter-skinned African Americans could use their ambiguous appearance to carve out new identities under difficult circumstances as whites scrambled to find new ways to keep people of color in their lowly place. The book reminds me of how far we still have to go in our obsession of race and who gets to decide questions of identity and class. For those who are not clearly one race or the other, which do we choose? What are the advantages of using arbitrary rules on race identity to move ahead? Do I embrace the ambiguity or find ways to be on one side of the line or the other? Mr. Ellis straddled many worlds, as an early ambassador for the cause of newly freed slaves, and then later using his Spanish skills to pass as a Mexican businessman. He traveled back and forth between race and countries and seemed to keep everyone guessing and often, worried: what is he really? Is he black? If he is, then I must treat him according to the rules I have learned about dealing with Negroes. Is he Mexican? A whole other set of assumptions and social interactions. All absurd and still too relevant since we don't allow people to just be who they are. It makes me think of 'hip' people who still point out people are black when they describe people ("He's a big black guy. I ran into this black guy today..." ), but not other races. So hip! Not! We have yet to make peace with the awful past and ideas of race permeate our thinking and cultarlization in ways we'd prefer to deny and get defensive about if brought into discussion (I refer to everyone by their race, not just black people! You are too sensitive and have a chip on your shoulder"). A fascinating portrayal of a man who fooled some of the people some of the time but then had to cut off his ties to the African American community he once advocated for. A good read and highly recommended!
3 people found this helpful
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Joyce B.
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, well written book
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2021
Verified Purchase
This book is riveting!. I was lucky enough to hear the author, professor Jacoby
speak on campus, and some of William Ellis' family members were there as well. This is one of those
"you can't make this up" kind of stories. A former slave, who learned the fur trading business, spoke fluent Spanish, whose life is a series of border crossings, racial, national, and cultural. His transformations shows how race is truly a man made construct, rather than an evidence based category.
In Texas Ellis is a black man, in his Wall Street business office he's a Mexican businessman, at times. Cuban His financial success came with a price, which was the severing of ties- at least for a time, to his family, identity and culture. He sent money to family members, but couldn't visit. Ellis is portrayed as an isolated figure, because he can't confide in anyone, his true identity is hidden, no one , not even his wife is aware that he is a black man, a former slave whose mother was forced to have sexual relations with her slave master. The book is also as much about the history of Mexico and the southwestern US as it is about Ellis. The rigid, punitive racist laws in the US contrasted sharply with the Mexican government's stance on slavery, and their struggle with American land grabbing. These stories are necessary strands to the tale that Jacoby weaves in this book. Ellis was an enigmatic, enterprising man with a fascinating life story.
One person found this helpful
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Linda, the YMCA retiree
5.0 out of 5 stars Well researched - fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2020
Verified Purchase
I moved to Victoria, TX five years ago, and love learning about the history of the town and Texas. William Ellis was the son of a slave that was brought to Victoria from Kentucky. This man was smart, hard-working, and very good at being in "the middle" of things. The book is very well-researched and shares a lot of facts concerning what the blacks were up against once the civil war was over. It was not an easy live and the cards were definitely stacked against them.
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Rex
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a page turner
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2020
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The story was promising but the narrative is not there. Not a page turner. I appreciate te effort in giving historical context but is not engaging. In sum, is not history nor story... Sorry.
One person found this helpful
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Tulip
4.0 out of 5 stars Reading the true story of the "Mexican Millionaire" was a perfect example of fact being stranger than fiction
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2017
Verified Purchase
I saw the author William Ellis on C-Span discussing his book and found it intriguing. Reading the true story of the "Mexican Millionaire" was a perfect example of fact being stranger than fiction. The author managed to research this lesser known person through largely obscure records and even tracked his descendants in both Mexico and the U.S. Many did not know of their ancestor or the secret he kept. The author did an amazing job of rescuing this man from the past, assembling his story and giving it to us in a fun and entertaining book. I would recommend this book to anyone who would enjoy reading about a unique real life character and his impact on his contemporaries as well as his family today.
16 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Jon
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on November 30, 2017
Verified Purchase
Karl Jacob's micro history is great! Worth the But!
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