Passing in African American Families

​Paperdoll Journal 

October 2018

Some of my great grandmother's family lived their adult life passing after their migration North.

Paperdoll Journal Ancestry is primarily a quest to understand family dynamics. Passing in my maternal grandmother's family was a common conversation when I was a young girl. During family get togethers it would always come up, 'Why were her siblings distant?' My grandmother and aunts would never answer with a complete explanation. They would shrug or say, I've told you before. Two generations of children would ask the same questions over the years without understanding enough to stop the wondering. 

In 1944, my grandmother lost her mother at fourteen years old, she and her younger siblings went to live with various aunts on both sides of her family.  Since much of the family history is lost to refusal to respond, the death of my grandmother and several of her siblings, I'm attempting to gather explanation through public history research.

This month my focus is on racial passing. 

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