{"id":62837,"date":"2022-01-20T21:06:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T21:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62837"},"modified":"2022-01-20T21:06:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T21:06:40","slug":"racial-passing-off-the-record-a-journey-in-reconnection-and-navigating-shifting-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62837","title":{"rendered":"Racial Passing off the Record: A Journey in Reconnection and Navigating Shifting Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racial Passing off the Record: A Journey in Reconnection and Navigating Shifting Identities<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Genealogy<\/a>
\nVolume 6, Issue 1 (March 2022)<\/a>
\nPublished online 2022-01-18
\n8 pages
\nDOI: 10.3390\/genealogy6010008<\/a><\/p>\n

Gabby C. Womack<\/strong><\/a>, Reference\/Access Services Associate, McQuade Library
\nMerrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anyone of African descent or with African ancestry who engages in a genealogy<\/a> project soon learns that the U.S. Census<\/a> is a helpful yet frustrating tool. In 2016, equipped with my history degree and an online ancestry search engine, I searched for my great-grandfather Leroy in census records after I saw a picture of him as a young man at work in Philadelphia<\/a>. This image would have been unremarkable had it not been for the fact that my African American ancestor was so light skinned that he seemed to blend in with his co-workers at Kramer\u2019s Fruit and Vegetables. I thought there had to be a story behind this. Classified as, \u201cMu\u201d, for mulatto<\/a> in most of his records, Leroy became \u201cBlack\u201d on the census in 1930. My first thought was to question whether this categorization changed for other folks like him. My research led me to my master\u2019s thesis \u201cFrom \u2018Mulatto\u2019 to \u2018Negro\u2019: How Fears of \u2018Passing\u2019 Changed the 1930 United States Census<\/a>\u201d. Through this research, I also became closer to my father\u2019s family. This piece will take you through this journey of discovery and my frustrations along the way.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in HTML<\/a> or PDF<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through this research, I also became closer to my father\u2019s family. This piece will take you through this journey of discovery and my frustrations along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[32819,29758,28827,4889,4888],"class_list":["post-62837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-gabby-c-womack","tag-gabby-womack","tag-genealogy","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62837","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=62837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62838,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62837\/revisions\/62838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}