December 28, 2003
"It was about time people knew"
By AMANDA PERRY
  
Fifty years ago, a movie about a black doctor in Keene who passed as white caused a national sensation.

Last month, a movie about a black man passing for white opened around the country. The Human Stain, starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, drew kind reviews but not much interest from the public.
Fifty years ago, a movie about a black man passing for white opened with such controversy it was banned in the South, sparked Supreme Court battles and won acclaim as "one of the most important social commentaries" of its time.

All this and it had its roots in New Hampshire.

The film, Lost Boundaries, told the tale of the Johnston family of Keene, who for years told no one they were African American. Dr. Albert Johnston and his wife, Thyra Johnston, had light complexions. Everyone, including the couple's four children, assumed they were white, and the Johnstons didn't correct them.

But the truth came out in 1947, when the family told their tale to an author who turned it into a best-seller. Soon, magazines from Life to Ebony were rushing to print their own versions.

The story became a movie, the confession a test: How would a quiet, Yankee city react to the revelation, at a time when racial barriers were more stark and racism institutionalized?

Paul Johnston was the youngest of Albert and Thyra's children. In old family photos he looks lily white, with straight brown hair and large brown eyes.

As the baby of the family, Johnston, now 68, was the last to be told of the family's heritage. But by then, Johnston said, he'd done enough eavesdropping to figure it out.

The news didn't hit him as hard as it did his older siblings. By the time 12-year-old Paul found out, the story was in print.

"It was so different back then," said Johnston, a retired X-ray technician who lives in Buzzards Bay, Mass. "In today's day and age, I don't think it would have made much of a difference, but back then it did."

That his parents felt the need to keep their heritage secret shows just how different things were in pre-Civil Rights America, Johnston said.

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'A drop of Negro blood'

Although they were both of mixed race, Albert and Thyra considered themselves black. The laws and customs of the time made it so; according to the mandate of segregation, people were black even if they had only "a drop of Negro blood."

But the same laws that determined people of mixed race were black also made it popular for people with light skin to pass as white.

Thyra was raised as black, first in New Orleans, then in Boston. But after high school, when she started working, she always wrote on job applications that she was white. With her blue-gray eyes and silky curls, no one questioned it.

For Albert, it was the other way around. His father insisted the family live as white and discouraged black friends and relatives from visiting their home in the Chicago suburbs in case the neighbors found out the truth. When white people asked Albert about his unusual features, he'd answer that he was one-eighth Cherokee, which was true.

But in college he embraced his black identity, joining the University of Chicago's chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity. At Rush Medical College, he was one of two black students in his class.

"I was treated well by both the faculty and students," Johnston said in the book Lost Boundaries. "No one is prejudiced against you if they know you."

But until they do, it can be hard. Albert found out just how hard when he began applying for jobs.

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Promise in Portland

When Johnston graduated from medical school in 1925, he was required to do an internship to complete his training. Hospitals eagerly accepted his application, but when they found out he was black, the positions were given to someone else. Some hospitals, such as Worcester City Hospital in Massachusetts, didn't give a reason. Others, such as a hospital in Toledo, Ohio, said it wasn't their policy to hire black doctors.

Johnston started to get desperate. By that time, he was married with a son, working for the railroad as a porter and a dining car waiter to support his family.

When a telegram arrived from Maine General Hospital in Portland, inviting him to do an internship, Johnston did what he felt he had to. The hospital didn't ask his race, so he didn't tell.

He got the job.

For Johnston, as for so many blacks, passing wasn't about getting something he didn't deserve. As Brooke Kroeger argues in her book, Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are, passing was usually about people getting what they were entitled to but denied by a racist society.

In later years, Thyra Johnston said in interviews the family never meant to deceive anyone. Letting people believe they were white was a way to get their foot in the door. But once their foot was in, they feared pulling it out lest the door slam shut.

The family eventually settled in Keene. Albert worked at the local hospital and served on the board of the state medical society. Thyra joined several women's auxiliary groups, and the children were popular and active in school.

Even before moving to Keene, the couple decided not to tell the kids about their heritage. Although Thyra wondered if they should, Albert said, "Let's just saw wood and see what happens."

With any luck, he said, they might never have to.

As it turned out, they chose to.

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Secret revealed

It wasn't one incident that made the family decide to tell their friends and neighbors the truth about their heritage. It was a series of events, starting with Albert Johnston's rejection from the Navy.

During World War II, the Navy twice asked Johnston to apply to serve in the medical corps. When he finally did, he was commissioned as a lieutenant commander.

He had even been assigned a ship when a Navy official scanning Johnston's resumé noticed he had belonged to a black fraternity. An investigator came to New Hampshire and, standing in the family's living room, asked Johnston if he had "colored blood" in his veins.

"Who knows what kind of blood any of us have in our veins?" Johnston answered.

That was enough. Soon after, the Navy sent Johnston a letter rescinding his commission, saying he was too short and too heavy to serve. Johnston dieted and applied again. He was still too short, the Navy said.

Although no one in town knew the real reason Johnston was rejected, he was embarrassed by the incident, his wife said. His anguish came to a head one evening, when his eldest child made a racist comment.

Sixteen-year-old Albert Jr. was home from prep school on break, getting ready for a date and telling his parents about a classmate who was a great guy, "even if he was colored."

His father marched into the bathroom, where Albert was drawing a bath, and shut off the tub.

"Do you know something, boy?" he said. "Your mother's colored and I'm colored."

Albert was shocked, but his initial reaction was positive. He said he was proud of his race. But the next five years saw Albert journey through a personal turmoil, questioning who he was.

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Movie-maker

It was through Albert that the Johnstons got to tell their story.

As a student at the University of New Hampshire, where he identified himself as black, Albert became involved with race advocacy. He and a friend went to see an award-winning New Hampshire filmmaker to pitch an idea for a movie about George Washington Carver.

The two boys were adamant that Hollywood needed to portray African Americans as characters other than "shoeshine boys and cotton pickers."

The filmmaker, Louis de Rochement, had already won two Academy awards for his documentaries, including one for the "March of Times" newsreels that played in the movie theaters during World War II.

De Rochement listened to the boys politely, then asked them a question, according to Paul Johnston.

"He said to my brother's friend, 'I understand why you want this film made, but what about you?' And Albert answered, 'Because I'm colored, and I just found out a couple of years ago.' "

His answer grabbed the filmmaker's attention. Intrigued, he told him to go home and draw up an 8-page summary, not about Carver, but about his family.

When Albert confronted his parents with the offer, it was Thyra who said he should go ahead. "She figured it was about time people knew," Paul Johnston said.

Albert Jr. stayed up all night with his parents writing their story.

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'Living with humans'

The summary was turned into a Reader's Digest article, and then a bestseller by William White. Other magazines and newspaper scrambled to their own stories, but Hollywood was less keen.

Failing to get backing from the major studios, De Rochement eventually mortgaged his house to make the movie. He shot on location in New Hampshire and Maine and got some big names to play the Johnstons. But the lead actor, Mel Ferrer, later said he had difficulty getting parts. Although he was white, casting directors assumed that he was black and had been passing.

But before shooting even started on the film, the family was facing the friends and neighbors in Keene who had just heard the truth.

In countless interviews, the Johnstons insisted their neighbors took the news with grace.

But a documentary made about the family in 1989 demonstrated that cruel words kept from the Johnstons were shared liberally among the rest of the townspeople.

Alice Andrews, who worked as a housekeeper for the family, said she was asked by some why she was "working for niggers."

"I told them," Andrews said, "that I was living with human beings."

Paul Johnston said the only place the family had problems was at the hospital. He believes, as did his father, that revealing the family's race led to Dr. Johnston's dismissal in 1953.

Hospital officials have denied this, saying that Johnston had started a radiology practice in his home, keeping him from hospital duty and competing with their department.

Johnston said he started the practice because he heard through colleagues that the hospital was trying to oust him.

Larry Benaquist, a professor of film studies at Keene State College who has studied the Johnstons' story, said for the most part, people in Keene didn't have a problem with the family being black.

"The average folks in Keene didn't care," Benaquist said. "It was the upper echelon that had a problem."

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'A strange, dark secret'

After a New Hampshire debut, the film Lost Boundaries opened at the Astor Theater in New York City in June 1949. It stayed there, selling out nearly every show, for six months. Audiences were fascinated by the tale of a family "living with a strange, dark secret," as the movie posters advertised.

It was a time when race was beginning to take a larger role in the public conscience, following the integration of the armed forces, according to Benaquist.

The film was well-received in some areas, and it won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay. But in the South it caused an uproar and was banned in Memphis and Atlanta.

The Atlanta Board of Movie Censors said the film would, "adversely affect the peace, morals and good order of the city" by showing blacks and whites on equal footing and intermingling.

De Rochement sued the city, but he had to take the case to a New Orleans appeals court before he won. Even then, white theater owners refused to show it.

While the strong reactions first depressed Albert Johnston Sr., they later propelled him into activism. He became a key speaker at NAACP events around the country.

He and his wife became celebrities, receiving letters from people all over the country. Even Keene enjoyed positive attention as a tolerant community. A woman in Ohio wrote the Johnstons asking if it would be a good place to raise her adopted son, who was black.

Despite the kindness from their neighbors, there was still some bad blood between Dr. Johnston and the hospital. In 1966, he and his wife moved to Hawaii. At the time, Thyra said it would be a good idea because Hawaii was more of an ethnic melting pot.

Albert Johnston eventually made it back to Keene. When he died in 1988, he was buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery. Thyra was buried next to him seven years later.

Paul Johnston said his parents always had a special place in their hearts for Keene.

While the Johnstons' story was credited with paving the way for important discussions on race relations, it didn't happen soon enough for the Johnston boys. All three passed as white to get into the military.

Even today, Paul Johnston's neighbors don't know he is part-black, although he says he would tell them if he was asked.

While passing isn't as necessary as it once was, it's still common, Johnston said.

"I know plenty of people who still pass," he said.

And just as racial secrecy still exists, it also still has the power to shock. Just two weeks ago, a 78-year-old woman launched a thousand headlines with her admission she was the daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. He was a champion of segregation and an opponent of civil rights legislation. She was half-black.

As Paul Johnston said, it's not the act so much as the revelation that really shocks.

"My was family wasn't unique for passing," he said. "They were unique for telling people about it."


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