Senior Awarded Huggins Prize

A sociology concentrator has won the first-ever Huggins Prize for the best senior thesis dealing with Afro-American history or culture.

Kimberly A. McClain '89, who wrote her thesis on the Haliwa-Sapani Indians of North Carolina, will receive $1000 from a fund set up by Dubois Professor of History and Afro-American Studies Nathan I. Huggins in memory of his late sister, Kathryn Ann Huggins.

The prize is designed to bring together student scholarship on Afro-American studies from across the College, Huggins said. The selection committee received entries from concentrators in a variety of departments, including History, Literature and Afro-American Studies, he said.

McClain's thesis used the Haliwa-Sapani, who have tried for more than a century to change their racial classification from Black to Native American, as a case study of the racial classification system in the United States, she said.

"It really identifies how race is a social construct and not biological," she said.

The Haliwa-Sapani--who have Black, Native American and European ancestors--were classified as mulatto in the early 19th century, but after the Civil War "the social significance of being mulatto was taken away," and the kinship group began to be classified as Black, McClain said.

It was then that they started their still uncompleted quest to be considered Native Americans, McClain said. "They didn't want to lose their mixed race status." she said.

They began to hold pow-wows and take on many other Native American customs, she said. "They created a culture."

McClain--whose ancestors include Irish, Native Americans and Blacks--travelled to North Carolina twice to study the group, and she may return for a more extended visit if she chooses to write a doctoral dissertation on them, she said.

The Adams House resident plans to travel for a year before going to graduate school in sociology, she said. She said she eventually hopes to go into academia.