Photo by Rusty Russell about the author
Daniel J. Sharfstein
Author of The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White
Daniel J. Sharfstein is an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University. He graduated from Yale Law School and from Harvard College, summa cum laude in History and Literature, and Afro-American Studies. Daniel’s writing focuses on the legal history of race in the United States. For his research on the color line in the American South, Daniel was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and was the inaugural recipient of the Raoul Berger Visiting Fellowship in Legal History at Harvard Law School. Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty in fall 2007, he was a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at New York University School of Law.
His forthcoming book, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, will be released in February 2011 by Penguin Press. His writing has also appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The American Prospect, and Legal Affairs.
Aside from his academic work, Daniel clerked for the Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Honorable Rya W. Zobel, United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was also an associate at Strumwasser & Woocher, a public interest law firm in Santa Monica, California. Prior to law school, he worked as a journalist in West Africa and Southern California.
Learn more about this speakerPress Links
"Escape into Whiteness"
The New York Review of Books
"Family Histories of ‘Passing’ from Black to White Documented in Book"
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
"Exploring Grays in a Black-and-White World"
Miller-Mccune
"In New Book, Two Kentucky Families Discover Surprising Racial Histories"
Lexington Herald-Leader
Daniel Sharfstein Interview
Minnesota Public Radio
"The Invisible Line: Three Families' Histories of 'Passing' from Black to White"
Seattle Times
"How 3 American families blurred the lines of race"
The Charlotte Observer
"Shades of White"
The New York Times Book Review
The Invisible Line Review
San Francisco Chronicle
Daniel Sharfstein Interview
The Christian Science Monitor
"Invisible Line: Transition From Slave to Free"
ABC
"A hero of African-American history whose story is forgotten"
Slate
The Invisible Line Review
Financial Times
"Tracing lives of three ‘white’ families and their black forebears"
The Boston Globe
"A Journey From Black to White"
Public Radio International's The Takeaway
"Daniel J. Sharfstein argues that America's color line isn't as straight as we might think"
Nashville Scene
"Saving the Race"
Legal Affairs
"Passing Fancy"
Legal Affairs
"The Secret History of Race in the United States"
Yale Law Journal
"Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860"
Minnesota Law Review
Featured Book
The Invisible Line
The Invisible Line shines light on one of the most important, but too often hidden, aspects of American history and culture. Sharfstein's narrative of three families negotiating America's punishing racial terrain is a must read for all who are interested in the construction of race in the United States."
—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello
Speaking Topics
- The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White
- Law and the Creation of Racial Categories in the United States
- The Hidden Migration: Three Centuries of African Americans Becoming White
- From Genealogy to History: Understanding Your Family Stories in Historical Context
- The Art of Narrative History
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