Elsie Roxborough started out to shake the stigma of color; when that proved impossible, she joined step with the oppressor. |
“Elsie Roxborough started out to shake the stigma of color; when that proved impossible, she joined step with the oppressor. Her life as a disguised alien in the middle reaches of the white social register did not satisfy her ambition or her pride. Perhaps no happy ending awaited her. The welcome thawings of racial prejudice after the war, and the first signs of a civil rights movement, would only have mocked and embittered her in the years of her deception. A happy child become desperate, she is a case study of the “dark sister” excluded by the American Dream.”
Kathleen A. Hauke, “The ‘Passing’ of Elsie Roxborough,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 23, Issue 2 (Spring 1984). 150. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0023.002:01.
Tags: Elsie Roxborough, Kathleen A. Hauke, Kathleen Hauke, Michigan Quarterly Review