'Black' NAACP leader outed as white woman

[haele]

56. Quite a few. Green-grey hazel eyes have never been unusual in North Africa.

Nor in the Middle East. Over the years, I've met many a person that was identified as "black", or who's family was black, who was as light or lighter than she is. There were pamphlets written in the 19th century for government and police officials on how to detect when a black person (i.e., a person who was at least 1/64th African) was trying to "pass", and just from the pictures presented, she could have been tagged as "not white", no matter what she tried to say she was.
They would look at the shape of her eyes, nose, and face, the texture of her hair, the color of her eyes, and skin tone. With today's product, hair texture is a bit difficult to tell from her pictures, but I suspect that the early 19th century slave catchers in Georgia and Louisiana wouldn't care, she's hit at least 5 of the 6 traits I've described, and they'd be asking around for anyone who could make a fuss for her as being white if they had a potential client lined up for the "recovery" of a light-skinned slave of her age.

This often made it difficult for some 19th century Irish and similar immigrants from the southwest of Britain, because depending on how many of their ancestors went fishing down in the Canaries or interacted with the Spanish Moors (which many did), many families have carried a broad "african" nose and grey-green eyes or a clear, olive-based skin tone common to North Africa and some of the Berbers. There are a few incidences of non-english speaking Europeans taken for run-away slaves and sold to plantations in the deep south up until almost the Civil War. If a slave with (to put it politely) more caucasian that african ancestry made it far enough north, it was much easier to pull off being a white man or woman who's family came from Ireland or Great Britain (or from any of the other Southern European countries) and start a new life.
Actually, I think that's what happened with a 2x Great Grandfather of mine who started off as a maitre de at an upscale hotel; when doing the family tree, he suddenly popped up as a 25/26 year old in Chicago around 1859, and no other record could be found of him or anyone else with a similar name around his age anywhere else.
The letters from my 2x Great Grandmother to her swooning friends described as very handsome man with a slight drawl; an oval face with flaring nostrils, almost six foot, piercing green-grey eyes, clear olive skin, and thick, curling light brown hair. Hmmm...of course, that side of my family would never consider he might have been anything but a handsome, penniless immigrant with exquisite manners who made a good living for himself. Except my own father, a history teacher, who often made his grey-eyed, curly haired mother very upset with some of his suggestions when he got annoyed at some of her John Bircher antics.

Anyway, back to the original story.

I suspect that since she apparently could self-identify and perhaps "passed" as black in her youth, there might have been some African or African American in her family anyway, if part of her family tree was either from Southwestern Britain or Ireland, or had been in the US since the early 1800s. I also suspect that if her parents are making a big deal about it, they're not wanting their friends to know that there might be enough AA in their family that in some places, they'd also be considered black, and lose some things they feel entitled to in a social - or even legal - setting.

Honestly, if the lady has a job as a regional head of the NAACP, she's made something of herself, and there's nothing any parent should be ashamed about.

Haele