Nicole's Final Project

For my final I will be further exploring racial passing.  I am interested in focusing on the reactions to passing that come from people on both sides of the color line and how these reactions more generally helped to shape people's opinions of people of different races and of the racial hierarchy itself.  I will be focusing on the story Passing by Nella Larsen which gives a perspective from the side of a black community that is witnessing someone passing as well as the reaction of one white male when he discovers the truth.  I will also be looking at the film, Lost Boundaries, which tells the story of the Johnston family who were discovered after many years of passing.  This movie shows some of the reactions of the white community that the family was living in.  This source is also especially interesting because it addresses the reactions of children who find out that they have been passing for their whole lives without even knowing it.  In this way, they are able to illustrate the feelings of people from both sides of the color line since they have always thought themselves to be white and they then discovered and had to adjust to the fact that they actually were not.  I will also be looking at several pieces by Langston Hughes including "Who's Passing for Who?", "Fooling our White Folks", and "Jokes on our White Folks" which each address passing in a comical and different way than my first two sources.  I will also be looking at a chapter from the book Crossing the Line by Gayle Wald which analyzes the films Lost Boundaries and Pinky and their effectiveness in realistically representing the experience of passing and the implications and aftermath of its discovery.  I will also be looking at Ebony and Jet articles that address passing in a different type of medium: popular magazine articles.

Sources:
 Hughes, Langston. "Fooling Our White Folks." Essays on Art, Race, Politics, and World Affairs. N.p.: University of Missouri, 2002. 313-17. Print.

Hughes, Langston. "Jokes on Our White Folks." Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender. Ed. Christopher C. De Santis. N.p.: University of Illinois, 1995. 97-99. Print.

Larsen, Nella. Passing. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.

Lost Boundaries. By Charles Palmer. Dir. Alfred Werker. Perf. Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer. Released by Film Classics, Inc., 1949. Videocassette.

Wald, Gayle. "Boundaries Lost and Found: Racial Passing and Cinematic Representation circa 1949." Crossing the Line. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2000. 82-115. Print.