The harder whites made it for blacks to earn a living, educate their children, and just make it through a single day without threat or insult, the greater the incentives grew for light-skinned blacks to leave their communities and establish themselves as white. If anything, the drumbeat of racial purity, the insistence that any African ancestry—a single drop of blood—tainted a person’s very existence, accelerated the migration to new identities and lives. The difference between white and black seemed obvious, an iron-clad rule, a biological fact. But the Walls knew that blacks could be as good as whites and as bad, as smart and as stupid. Blacks had just as much claim to schooling and jobs and love and family, to common courtesies each day. The Walls knew that blacks could be every bit the equal to whites—and that their skins could be equally light. As the United States veered from slavery to Jim Crow, O.S.B. Wall’s children did not stand up and fight. They faded away.
Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 236.
Tags: Daniel J. Sharfstein, Daniel Sharfstein