Fade To White

This episode is dedicated to the memory of the brilliant Neil Bowman Todd (1936-2014), who was the head of research services at the National Genealogical Historical Society (NEHGS).  “In genealogy, you start with yourself and work your way back…

“In genealogy, you start with yourself and work your way backwards…” In March, 1997, Jill Sim writes an email to Vassar College, which had graduated both her grandmother and great-grandmother. Jill learns from Vassar’s Alumnae Association that her great-grandmother Anita Hemmings is considered the first African American graduate of the school. This prompts Jill to reach out to the New England Genealogical Historical Society (NEHGS) in Boston to learn something about Anita’s background, and her

Dr. Love, Anita, Ellen, and Barbara in the New Family Car, New York City, 1910. In Episode Two, Jill Sim covers her grandmother Ellen’s passed down recollections of childhood, between 1907-1923. Ellen Love is born to the house of her grand…

In Episode Two, we look at the childhoods of Jill Sim's grandmother, Ellen, and her two siblings, Andy and Barbara, raised as solidly white middle class after their parents, Dr. Andrew and Anita Hemmings Love, make the decision to leave Boston and pass as white.

On June 18, 1994, Ellen Love, a former Broadway actress, dies from a fall in her hotel room. Jill Sim, her granddaughter, and researcher, writer, and host of the Fade to White Podcast, learns that her white grandmother had a black grandfather. The discovery will lead Jill on a thirty-year personal journey to uncover the full story of her white family’s rich black history. Music Notes: Original Music by Al Sim: "Mystery 3" "Mystery 1" "Cold Case Blues" "March o

Welcome to the Fade to White Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Sim, and it is my honor to take you on a personal journey of discovery into my family history; a labor of love that has taken me 30 years to complete; a story of a family who went from black …