{"id":63624,"date":"2022-03-31T22:52:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63624"},"modified":"2022-03-31T23:23:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T23:23:05","slug":"stories-of-racial-passing-from-the-pages-of-nella-larsen-to-detroits-upper-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63624","title":{"rendered":"Stories of racial passing, from the pages of Nella Larsen to Detroit&#8217;s upper class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\/show\/stateside\/2022-03-25\/stories-of-racial-passing-from-the-pages-of-nella-larsen-to-detroits-upper-class\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Stories of racial passing, from the pages of Nella Larsen to Detroit&#8217;s upper class<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\/show\/stateside\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stateside<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Michigan Radio<\/a><br \/>\n2022-03-25<\/p>\n<figure><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\/show\/stateside\/2022-03-25\/stories-of-racial-passing-from-the-pages-of-nella-larsen-to-detroits-upper-class\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 98%; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/a2ee098\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1600x1200+0+0\/resize\/1760x1320!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8f%2F4e%2Fff53b30b47a88892b4d70c0886a5%2Fellen-and-william-craft.jpg\"><\/a><figcaption style=\"font-size: x-small; width: 98%; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"><em>&#8220;Still&#8217;s Underground Rail Road Records,&#8221; 1886&nbsp; \/Boston African American National Historic Site<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nTo escape slavery in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Georgia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Georgia<\/a>, light-skinned <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ellen_and_William_Craft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ellen Craft<\/a> and her dark-skinned husband William posed, respectively, as a white gentleman traveling with his enslaved manservant in 1848.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/omny.fm\/shows\/stateside\/passing-the-story-of-elsie-roxborough\/embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"180px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elsie_Roxborough\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elsie Roxborough<\/a> was born in 1914 in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Detroit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Detroit<\/a> to one of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michigan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Michigan\u2019s<\/a> most prominent Black families. When she died in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New York City<\/a> in 1949, her death certificate listed her race as white. She had lived there <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as a white woman<\/a> for over a decade, working for a time as a model while aspiring to acclaim as a playwright.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe almost immediately goes to New York City after graduation from the University of Michigan,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/historylivesdet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ken Coleman<\/a>, a journalist who has researched the Roxborough family. Elsie Roxborough \u201cat least professionally changed her name to Pat Rico at one point, and then ultimately, Mona Manet, and her brown, brownish-black hair becomes <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lucille_Ball\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lucille Ball<\/a> auburn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Roxborough represents one of the few documented historical instances from Michigan of a Black person choosing to live nearly full-time as a member of white society. This phenomenon, known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">racial passing<\/a>, has received renewed popular attention through recent artistic works like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Passing_(film)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rebecca Hall\u2019s film adaptation<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nella_Larsen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> 1929 novel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=2508\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Passing<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/britbennett.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Britt Bennett\u2019s<\/a> novel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59715\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Vanishing Half<\/em><\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the story (00:19:36) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\/show\/stateside\/2022-03-25\/stories-of-racial-passing-from-the-pages-of-nella-larsen-to-detroits-upper-class\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roxborough represents one of the few documented historical instances from Michigan of a Black person choosing to live nearly full-time as a member of white society. This phenomenon, known as racial passing, has received renewed popular attention through recent artistic works like Rebecca Hall\u2019s film adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel &#8220;Passing&#8221; and Britt Bennett\u2019s novel &#8220;The Vanishing Half.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2850,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[33395,5965,88,17448,33369,5754,33368,87,2711,596,28879,33367,19065],"class_list":["post-63624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-audio","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-britt-bennett","tag-detroit","tag-ellen-craft","tag-elsie-roxborough","tag-ken-coleman","tag-michigan","tag-michigan-radio","tag-nella-larsen","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-stateside","tag-william-and-ellen-craft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63624","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=63624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63630,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63624\/revisions\/63630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}