  |
 ![[University of Massachusetts Press]](../../images/mass_press.gif){kind=small} |
Passing for White
Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920
Review
New Scholarly Books
Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub
Nota Bene
The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 6, 2002
In 19th-century America, the "one-drop rule" was explicit. Any degree of African
ancestry and one could be considered black. "Passing" was a matter of secrecy
and trepidation. But for the Healys, transplanted Southerners in Massachusetts,
passing was remarkably public, as was their success story.
The tale begins far from New England, notes James M. O’Toole, a historian at Boston College and author of Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920 (University of Massachusetts Press).
Michael Healy, an Irish immigrant, arrived in Georgia in 1818 and amassed property in Jones County. He grew cotton and owned slaves. In 1829, one of them, Eliza Clark, became his wife. While their union could have no legal sanction, they lived together in a de facto common-law marriage. Two factors, says Mr. O’Toole, helped them achieve some local acceptance: the remoteness of the Healy lands and the deference paid to wealth.
Still, Michael knew his family s peril. Should he die, Eliza and their nine children could be sold. Under Georgia law, he could not free them in his will. So he began planning an escape. A chance meeting with a Roman Catholic bishop offered hope. The four oldest boys, James, Hugh, Patrick, and Sherwood, were sent to Massachusetts in 1844 to study at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution with a grammar school on campus. The oldest girl, Martha, was sent to board with a Boston family. When Eliza, and then Michael, died in 1850, the careful wording of the latter’s will allowed the children in the North to claim his estate. Meanwhile, Hugh risked his freedom to bring his youngest siblings from Georgia.
Starting with the oldest boys, Mr. O’Toole shows how relocation, wealth, and an embrace of Catholicism became means for the Healys to distance themselves from their black ancestry. "They made their identity simpler by making it more complicated," he argues. The church’s record on race and slavery, he notes, was unimpressive. Yet, the Healys were accepted. Three became priests. All were treated as white despite knowledge of their heritage. This applied equally to Patrick, who appeared to be white; Sherwood, whose appearance clearly revealed his ancestry; and James, who was somewhere in between.
James became a powerful priest in Boston and eventually bishop of Portland, Me., Patrick was president of Georgetown University from 1873 to 1882, and Sherwood was rector of Boston’s Cathedral.
-NINA C. AYOUB
The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 6, 2002
 |
|
