'Nothing Negro About Him, Except...': Ira Aldridge and the Campaign For and Against Racialism.

This article examines how Ira Aldridge, a pioneering African American actor who performed across Europe in the nineteenth century, became a complex and contested figure in debates over race and racial pseudoscience. Aldridge was used by both proponents and opponents of racial hierarchies: racialists portrayed him as an exceptional anomaly or evidence of racial difference, often emphasizing supposed mixed ancestry, while abolitionists and anti-racialists highlighted his undeniable blackness and artistic mastery as proof against biological racial inferiority. His career and public image intersected with key racial debates of the post-abolition era, with Aldridge frequently conflated with the fictional character Othello, complicating his legacy. Ultimately, Aldridge served as a symbolic figure through which nineteenth-century society negotiated ideas about race, talent, and social progress.