Tag: Albert Chandler Johnston

  • Landmark ’49 Film About Family Passing for White Recalled The Los Angeles Times 1989-07-25 Margaret Lillard The Associated Press KEENE, N.H. — For 12 years, Dr. Albert Johnston and his wife had a secret–a secret they kept from friends, neighbors, even their children. But in 1941, their secret came out–each was part black. The fair-skinned…

  • Thyra Johnston, 91, Symbol Of Racial Distinctions, Dies The New York Times 1995-11-29 Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. (1939-2000) Thyra Johnston, a blue-eyed fair-skinned New Hampshire homemaker who became a symbol of the silliness of racial distinctions when she and her husband announced that they were black, died on Nov. 22 at her home in Honolulu.…

  • Stanford historian re-examines practice of racial ‘passing’ Stanford News The Humanities at Stanford 2013-12-18 Nate Sloan, Doctoral Candidate in Musicology Stanford University In the margins of historical accounts and the dusty corners of family archives, Stanford history Professor Allyson Hobbs uncovers stories long kept hidden: those of African Americans who passed as white, from the…