Fade To White

Anita Hemmings' great-granddaughter Jill Sim tells the story of Anita's experience at elite women's college Vassar, in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the fallout when it was learned before graduation that Anita had been passing for white the entire time.

Attributions  Coverage of Anita Hemmings at Vassar is taken from period newspapers found at the Boston Public Library, the Chronicling America newspaper database at the Library of Congress, Newspaperarchive.com and Newspapers.com.  “Irreproachab…

Jill Sim looks at family connections to Boston Brahmin religious circles, and a segregated church culture during the period of rapid change given by immigration waves to Boston. Within the complexities of a family’ of color’s tenuous standing in the shifting society, anti-Catholic and Irish sentiments simmer beneath ardent values of equity.

Jill Sim looks at family connections to Boston Brahmin religious circles, and a segregated church culture during the period of rapid change given by immigration waves to Boston. Within the complexities of a family’ of color’s tenuous standing in the shifting society, anti-Catholic and Irish sentiments simmer beneath ardent values of equity.

Jill Sim looks at family connections to Boston Brahmin religious circles, and a segregated church culture during the period of rapid change given by immigration waves to Boston.  Within the complexities of a family’ of color’s tenuous standing in t…

Jill looks at Boston Brahmins, the White Anglo Saxon Protestant class, and their ordered-up caste structure of the 19th century in the context of the Hemmings family, and their friends, who made up what sociologist Adelaide Cromwell termed: “The Other Brahmins.”