Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family, 1820-1920

The story of a mixed-race family, Michael Healy, a white Irish immigrant planter in Georgia; his African American slave and wife Eliza, and their nine children, negotiating the terrain of race and ethnicity in 19th century America. Legally slaves these brothers and sisters were smuggled north prior to the Civil War to be educated. Working at the intersection of church history and racial and ethnic, James O'Toole demonstrates that racial categories have been more fluid than law and custom admit. The Healys found freedom and extraordinary achievement by embracing their Irish heritage and the Catholic faith, while distancing themselves from their African roots and slave status.

About the Author :

JAMES M. O'TOOLE is associate professor of history at Boston College and author of Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1895-1944.

"[A] lucid, riveting work."--St. Anthony's Messenger

"The story is the thing. And it is a great story."--Cleveland Call and Post

"O'Toole tells the remarkably well documented story of an American family negotiating the terrain of race and ethnicity in the nineteenth century. This important book presents a more complex American racial past and contributes to our understanding of the challenges of a multiracial future."--Lois E. Horton and James Oliver Horton, authors of In Hope of Liberty and Black Bostonians

"This is a remarkably interesting story. The research is very impressive in both thoroughness and scope. . . . I know of no book that is anywhere near as complete in its extraordinary story of an entire family in the United States when the nation was so heavily, both historically and fundamentally, a bi-rather than multiple- 'racial' society."--Winthrop D. Jordan, author of White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812

"This book is enormously informative on the subject of race and religion in the nineteenth century, beautifully told, and superbly researched. . . . Upon its publication it will be one of the best books we have on nineteenth-century Catholic history, and an important study for the rapidly growing field of 'racial' identity."--John T. McGreevy, author of Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North