A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life

so I'd like to start by talking a little bit about the inspiration for my project and my project was inspired by a story that my aunt told me about a distant cousin of ours who grew up on the south side of Chicago in the 1930s and the story begins with a parade with the historic bud Billiken parade an annual parade that continues to this day on a sizzling summer morning in August my cousin left from her bed to find the best spot to view the parade she joined a crowd that numbered in the thousands and she cheered as drum majors baton twirlers and celebrities in convertibles passed by she ran out to the floats to touch the parade's anointed king and queen and she caught the candy that the participants tossed to her the parade was a South Side institution and at a time when racial tensions ran high when black family squeezed into overcrowded kitchenettes and when black children knew not to venture beyond the boundaries of their neighborhood the bud Billiken parade evoked a deep sense of race pride community and togetherness for one day a year black children could imagine that the City of Chicago was all theirs our cousin could not have known that this would be her last time hearing the marching bands and the cheering crowds unlike many black parents she would not share this experience with her children she was black but she was very light-skinned in fact she looked white at the insistence of her mother after she graduated from high school she would move far away from Chicago's South Side to Los Angeles to live the rest of her life as a white woman it was not her choice she pleaded with her mother she did not want to leave her family her friends and the only life she had ever known but her mother was determined and the matter was decided years later after she married a white man and had white children who knew nothing of their mother's past she received a very inconvenient telephone call it was her mother and she was calling to tell her that her father was dying and that she must come home immediately despite these dire circumstances she would never return to Chicago's South Side the young girl who had once sat on a curb in Chicago's most historic black neighborhood to watch America's largest black parade was a white woman now and there was simply no turning back so after my aunt told me this story it haunted me so I spent the last 12 years wrestling with this curious phenomenon of passing conventional wisdom tells us that a history of passing cannot be ridden that those who pass let no trace in the historical record but I believe that the sources were out there for historians just waiting to be discovered so I went into the archives looking for ghosts hoping to tell their stories to find these ghosts historians must seek out unconventional sources these sources revealed passing to be a deeply individualistic practice but also a fundamental social act with enormous social consequences the iconic image of the heartbroken yet sympathetic black mother who must not speak a word nor lay eyes upon her white looking child in public lays bare the painful consequences of this practice a history of passing cannot be ridden without telling her story to those who were left behind describes the pain and the loss of this act just as keenly as those who passed and now I want to just show a scene from a film called imitation of life and I'm going to show a scene from the 1930s 34 version of this film because it's one of the few films about passing that actually features a black actress who played the role of the the woman who was passing as white and it was played by a woman named Freddy Washington so I'll just show you this let's see Oh thank you luckily for you we will look at entered when to you I could talking to me there must be some mistake my name isn't peeler you know mistake Bacchus Jim you don't have to work out gig attending someone else but what Beulah jell-o well that's ridiculous I ever saw you before another meaning of this this woman doesn't know what she's talking about I could be your daughter but she must be crazy Peola how can you talk to your mother that way come on okay so passing is often sorry passing is often presented as a story of gain by passing his white particularly during the years of legalized segregation one could access a range of employment opportunities that would otherwise be restricted one could live in a better neighborhood one could enjoy countless social privileges like being addressed as mr. or mrs. respectful titles reserved for white men and women only but my cousin's story and the scene that I've just shown you from imitation of life demonstrates that to write a history of passing is to write a history of loss the goal of my work is to explore not only what was gained by passing as white but also what was lost by walking away from a black identity racial passing is an exile sometimes chosen sometimes not from the late 18th century to the present in the United States countless african-americans passed as white leaving behind families friends communities and roots lies were lost only to be remembered in family stories like mine rather than seeing the racial rather than seeing racial identity from the racial regime looking down on those who passed his white I bring into focus what passers saw when they looked out on their own worlds race was quite real to those who lived with it not because of skin color or essentialist notion about biology but because it was social and experiential because it involved one's closest relationships and ones most intimate communities during the long years of Jim Crow segregation in the United States the period from roughly 1890 to 1955 passing meant striking out on one's own and leaving behind a family and a people without a doubt benefits accrue to these new white identities but a more complete understanding of this practice requires reckoning with the loss alienation and isolation that accompanied and often outweighed its rewards let me take a step back and offer broader historical context to this project racial passing in the United States is the focus of my project but it must be acknowledged is only a subset of a much larger phenomenon that encompasses multiple disguises and forms of dissemblers in the 19th century as young men and women steadily migrated out of small towns to seek their fortunes in America's booming cities American Victorians warned that these men and women might pass and enter higher social classes to which they did not belong given the social fluidity of early 19th century America while American Victorians were fretting over class passing Jewish applicants changed their names to outmaneuver discriminatory admissions policies that limited enrollments at universities such as Harvard Princeton and Yale Chinese immigrants disguised themselves to pass as Mexican and enter the United States from the us-mexico border during the era when the Chinese were excluded from rating to the United States Loretta Vasquez a Cuban born woman passed as a Confederate soldier to fight in the Civil War and entered the ranks of numerous women who joined the military or participated in occupations and activities restricted to men gay men passed as straight also known as quote putting their hair up married women and worked in professions that would have been unavailable to them if they had quote let their hair down and miss Mesirow the flamboyant jazz saxophonist born to Russian Jewish immigrants past as black to shore up his musical credentials here I have identified only a handful of examples of a sweeping phenomenon to demonstrate its flexibility and adaptability to various historical contexts the poor past as the rich women past as men Jews fast as Gentiles gay men and women past as straight and white sometimes past as black and of course the reverse of each of these diets was plausible given specific conditions and circumstances particularly in societies with relatively open and fluid social orders the permutations on passing or endless now let me give you a brief overview of my book which spans the late 18th to the mid 20th centuries the lived experience of passing the act of negotiating the permeable border between black and white reveals one way that everyday people have interacted with a racist society since the late 18th century each era determined not only how racially ambiguous men and women lived but also what they lost in the antebellum period enslaved men and women lived with a looming threat of loss knowing that they could be bought sold and forever separated from their families if their master lost a card game or decided to present a slave as a wedding gift during the era of slavery to pass as white was to escape not necessarily from blackness but from slavery often with the intention of recovering precious relationships and living as black under the more secure conditions of freedom passing us white became possible in a society where whiteness was not based solely on appearance but also on dress behavior and mannerisms indeed skin color and physical appearance were usually the least reliable factors racially ambiguous slaves drew on highly sophisticated understandings of racial gender and social norms to enact whiteness and by doing so many successfully passed to freedom ellen craft passed as a white man crossing both racial and gender lines to escape to freedom while her darker-skinned husband played the role of her slave it was necessary for Ellen to pass as a man because she knew that it was highly unconventional for a white woman to travel alone with a male slave but the craft convincing performance required far more than Ellen's white skin it was Ellen's knowledge of how to dress and comport herself like a Southern gentleman and her subtle and nuanced understandings of southern social and gender norms that made this daring undertaking a marvelous success concerned that her beardless face might betray her or that her illiteracy would prevent her from registering her name at hotels ellen became a master of improvisation she bound her right hand in a sling so that she could ask others to sign her name for her she bandaged her face so that no one would know that she did not have a beard by feigning illness disability and even deafness Ellen politely excused herself from conversation and won the sympathy of other travelers in fact Ellen played the role of a Southern gentleman so well white southern ladies reportedly swooned in her presence passing to freedom however was not nearly as laden with the moral questions and experiences with laws that would follow in later years during the Jim Crow era segregated living and working arrangements created the necessary conditions for passing to flourish but also for this practice to undermine black families and communities this period also witnessed the great migration the massive and unprecedented migrations of African Americans out of the South that allowed racially ambiguous people to travel and to try on new identities in the anonymity of northern cities one woman described her grandmother's journey from Mississippi to Chicago once in Chicago and no longer immediately identifiable as Lula's daughter her grandmother could easily enter the white world this was one of the most common forms of passing during the Jim Crow era working white while living black nine-to-five passing as it was often called which allowed nearly white men and women to access employment slated for whites-only simply mentioning that a family member had a white-collar job became shorthand for passing as white given the strict segregation of employment opportunities others passed as white temporarily or situationally to seek respite from Jim Crow living every now and then in a 1932 letter to Carl Van Vechten novelist nella Larsen passed while in the company of James Weldon Johnson 'he's light-skinned wife grapes and this is what what what nella Larsen wrote to Carl Van Vechten you will be amused that I who have never tried this much to sky must much discussed passing stunts have waited until I reached the deep south to put it over grace Johnson and I drove about fifty miles south of here the other day and then walk to the best restaurant in a rather conservative town called Murfreesboro and demanded lunch and got it plus all the service in the world and an invitation to return everybody here seems to think that quite a stunt Larsen's letter reveals the type of momentary passing that became commonplace during the Jim Crow era but it also reveals the fun and the theatrics of passing convincing performances required gumption resourcefulness and no small measure of humor the sheer joy of getting over and quote fooling our white folks as Langston Hughes put it made passing a means of poking fun at a racial system laden with absurdities about racial purity Walter White the racially ambiguous executive secretary the n-double-a-cp made pudding made a practice of putting his blonde hair and blue eyes to use to enter the South during the 1920s to investigate lynching white must have laughed nervously when he sat next to a white man on a train who bragged that he had special expertise in identifying blacks who passed as white taking White's hand into his own and pointing at White's cuticles the man explained that if white had black blood it would show on his fingernails an antiquated belief about a telltale sign of black racial identity in a country obsessed with rich racial distinctions passing demonstrated just how unreliable one's appearance was in determining race at times passing was a practical joke at the expense of whites but this levity must not obscure the high emotional stakes the threats to family coherence and the personal pain that this practice necessitated let me conclude with one of the most heart-rending stories of passing that I discovered in the archives this is the story of Elsie rocksboro who was born to a famous african-american family she chose to pass as white after she graduated from the University of Michigan in 1937 her story ends in tragedy she took her own life in 1949 during the Depression the Roxboro family lived a life that few Americans black or white could imagine they had maids and chauffeurs Elsie rode horses and drove her father's cars the family vacationed with other black elites at Idlewild a lakefront resort in western michigan nicknamed the black eden novelist and poet Langston Hughes wrote that Elsie would tell him her dreams and wonder whether or not it would be better for her to pass as white to achieve them after college Elsie moved to New York she dyed her brown hair red and dropped the famous Roxboro name to become the unattached white Mona MNA but even as a white woman her dreams would never come true and this is a picture of her when she was passing as white when Elsie's white roommate returned from a weekend trip she found Elsie in her bed it appeared that she had committed suicide her sister who could also pass as white traveled to New York with the wrenching assignment of claiming the body the arrival of this ostensibly white woman allowed Elsie to remain white even in death Elsie had ridden her father for financial help he refused her and three days later she was dead her sister would never speak to her father again by the 1940s and through the 1960s personal testimonies began to declare that the losses of passing or simply too much and it was time to give up and come home the Black Press began to publish numerous testimonials of African Americans who disavowed passing and cataloged the countless psychological advantages of embracing a black identity many articles announced the collapse of economic barriers after World War two and also focused on the collective pride that African Americans experienced and the growing protest spirit of the burgeoning rights movement the Johnston family shown here in their suburban home in Keene New Hampshire passed for 20 years before they were discovered the father a successful and well-respected radiologist applied to be an officer in the Navy during World War two a background check revealed that he had been in a black fraternity during college now note to self if you plan to pass probably best not to join a black fraternity in college but you know whatever whatever you want to do so the family's secret was revealed but when it was revealed they insisted that they were through with passing and that they would never pass again by the 1960s racial politics had changed once again black identities were affirmed and passing was rejected black was beautiful blending in with the white world no longer seemed economically necessary politically advantageous or socially desirable I am often asked do people still pass today and of course we know that in fact they do and I am certain that passing continues but probably in very different ways than what I have described in my talk we now live in a far more multiracial society than Ellen Kraft or LC rocksboro could have ever imagined the conditions of the 21st century allow for a greater acceptance of mixed-race identities but still the core issues of race and identity remaining each generation must navigate the social currents and racial realities of their time period a history of passing opens a window on the complexity of the human experience it allows us to gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the ways that race is lived and variants some african-americans Jews passing as a crucial channel leading to physical and personal freedom they declared their rights as suit as American citizens and insisted on their humanity what they could not have fully known until they had successfully passed was that the light of freedom was often overshadowed by the darkness of loss thank you

Channel: Emory University

Views: 254,167

Keywords: emory university, james weldon johnson institute, jwji, racial passing, race and difference, emory college

Id: toyjv27q17E

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2016