{"id":35111,"date":"2013-12-19T09:50:53","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T09:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35111"},"modified":"2013-12-19T18:06:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T18:06:57","slug":"thyra-johnston-91-symbol-of-racial-distinctions-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35111","title":{"rendered":"Thyra Johnston, 91, Symbol Of Racial Distinctions, Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thyra Johnston, 91, Symbol Of Racial Distinctions, Dies<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n1995-11-29<\/p>\n

Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.<\/a><\/strong> (1939-2000)<\/p>\n

Thyra Johnston, a blue-eyed fair-skinned New Hampshire<\/a> 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<\/a>. She was 91.<\/p>\n

She was the real-life heroine of “Lost Boundaries<\/a>,” a movie that stunned the nation in 1949.<\/p>\n

It is doubtful that Norman Rockwell<\/a> could have dreamed up a family that better epitomized the small-town Depression<\/a>-era American ideal than Albert and Thyra Johnston and their four children.<\/p>\n

Dr. Johnston, who was born in Chicago<\/a>, graduated with honors from the University of Chicago Medical School and studied radiology at Harvard. He was such a respected figure that in the 10 years that he practiced in Gorham, N.H.<\/a>, he headed the school board, was a selectman, was president of the county medical society and became chairman of the local Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Johnston, who was born in New Orleans<\/a>, grew up in Boston<\/a> and married her husband when he was a medical student, and was at once a model homemaker and mother and a civic and social leader whose well-appointed home in exclusive Prospect Hill was the scene of the annual Christmas social of the Congregational Church.<\/p>\n

But Mrs. Johnston, described by her son Albert Jr. as looking as Irish as any of her neighbors, had a secret. In a society of such perverse attitudes that black “blood” was simultaneously scorned and regarded as so powerful that the tiniest trace was considered the defining racial characteristic, she was born one-eighth black, enough to qualify her as “Negro” on her birth certificate…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[16588,16585,2640,16590,2327,16592,16589],"class_list":["post-35111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-albert-chandler-johnston","tag-albert-johnston","tag-new-york-times","tag-robert-mcg-thomas-jr","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-thyra-baumann","tag-thyra-johnston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}