I Passed for White, by Reba Lee As Told to Mary Hastings Bradley

Reba Lee was a young African American whose skin was almost white. She was brought up in Chicago but, once grown up and with a job, she ran away to another city and succeeded in passing herself off as a white girl. By observing and imitating her circle of white friends, she learned how to live in a white world. She got engaged and married to an attractive white man. Beautiful and quick-witted, outwardly poised and happy, she overcame the strain of a life of constant lying and an ever-present sense of danger, until she became pregnant and was overwhelmed by the terror that her baby might be dark-skinned.

Reba Lee [not her real name] told her story to writer Mary Hastings Bradley. Bradley [1882-1976] was the author of numerous mysteries, travel books, short fiction and novels, including the Old Chicago series of historical novels. She traveled to Egypt and the Belgian Congo and was a war correspondent for Colliers Magazine, reporting in 1945 on women in the military in Italy, France and Germany. At her death, it was revealed that her daughter Alice B. Sheldon was well-known science fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr.