{"id":55850,"date":"2018-03-06T21:11:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T21:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55850"},"modified":"2018-03-06T21:11:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T21:11:53","slug":"history-matters-the-story-behind-lost-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55850","title":{"rendered":"History Matters: The story behind \u2018Lost Boundaries\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

History Matters: The story behind \u2018Lost Boundaries\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Portsmouth Herald<\/a> (Seacoast Online)
\nPortsmouth, New Hampshire
\n2018-03-05<\/p>\n

J. Dennis Robinson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Albert Johnston Jr. was 16 when he found out he was black. His fair-skinned African-American parents had been \u201cpassing\u201d as white<\/a>, they told him, since moving from Chicago<\/a> to rural Gorham, New Hampshire<\/a>, and later to Keene<\/a>. Albert\u2019s father had been the town\u2019s country doctor with 2,500 white patients and an active member of the school board, the Masons<\/a> and the Rotary<\/a>. His mother, Thyra, was a two-time president of the Gorham Women\u2019s Club and active in the Congregational Church.<\/p>\n

Born in 1925, growing up skiing the White Mountains<\/a> of the Granite State<\/a>, Albert had only a single black acquaintance in high school. In an era of widespread racial segregation and discrimination, Albert felt a seismic shift as he adapted from a dark-skinned Caucasian to a light-skinned \u201cNegro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Albert took a road trip. Two decades before Ken Kesey<\/a> and Easy Rider<\/em><\/a>, with only a few dollars in their pockets, Albert and an old school chum named Walt hitchhiked and hopped freight trains from New Hampshire to California<\/a>. For Albert, it was a spiritual journey into the homes of his long-lost African-American relatives and into the roots of black culture. For Walt, who was white, it was a great adventure with a good friend. Albert eventually found his way home. Renewed and focused, he enrolled in the well-regarded music program at the University of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

And here, in a UNH college lounge in front of 20 fellow students, Albert Johnston Jr. finally laid his burden down. During a seminar on the \u201crace problem\u201d in America, the topic turned to \u201ccross-bred\u201d people. He could offer some insight on that topic, Albert told his classmates, because he, himself, was a Negro.<\/p>\n

The room got very still, he later recalled, like the sudden silence after the climax of a concerto. The Johnston family secret was about to explode, first into the pages of Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em><\/a> magazine, and then as a controversial book and feature film called \u201cLost Boundaries<\/a>.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Albert Johnston Jr. was 16 when he found out he was black. His fair-skinned African-American parents had been \u201cpassing\u201d as white, they told him, since moving from Chicago to rural Gorham, New Hampshire, and later to Keene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[16585,23610,26840,23595,5755,26842,28123,26841],"class_list":["post-55850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-albert-johnston","tag-albert-johnston-jr","tag-j-dennis-robinson","tag-lost-boundaries","tag-new-hampshire","tag-portsmouth-herald","tag-seacoast-online","tag-the-portsmouth-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850","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=55850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55851,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850\/revisions\/55851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}