The Gilded Years (44 page)

The story of Anita Hemmings began for me in 2013, when I came across a dusty stack of Vassar College alumni magazines I kept from my student years. A cover from 2001, with a picture of a beautiful woman wearing a style of dress popular in the Gilded Age, caught my attention and I immediately began to read the article inside. “Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897,” written by Olivia Mancini, a Vassar alumna, quoted Anita’s great-granddaughter Jillian Atkin Sim extensively. The article went on to explain that Anita Hemmings was Vassar’s first African-American graduate, but that she passed as white until her roommate revealed her secret at the end of their senior year. What it did not mention was who her roommate was or how she came to know that Anita wasn’t just of French and English ancestry
as she claimed. I, a loyal Vassar grad, was surprised that I had never heard Anita’s story before, but I was immediately taken with it and started down a path of research and writing that would happily consume me for years.

Following the Vassar article, I read an in-depth piece by Anita’s great-granddaughter, published in
American Heritage
magazine in 1999, in which Jillian disclosed that it was the death of her grandmother, Ellen Love, in 1994, which led her to discover the truth about her family’s race, eventually finding out that Anita was Vassar’s first African-American graduate and her daughter, Ellen, the school’s second. Jillian stated that after Anita and Andrew Love were married, they chose to pass as white once they moved to New York City. The consequence of that decision was that their children, including Ellen, were cut off from their black relatives. By Jillian’s account, Dora Hemmings, Anita’s mother, came to the Love residence in New York only once and was made to enter via the service entrance. Yet, according to Jillian, their daughter Ellen was aware of her race during her time at Vassar, as she was able to find her grandmother on Martha’s Vineyard in 1923.

Jillian’s more recent research extended to the familiar Hemmings name and the fact that Anita’s family hailed from Virginia. Could she be related to the famous Hemings clan, the one forever tied to President Thomas Jefferson through his relationship with Sally Hemings, despite their different spellings? Jillian believes, but has yet to confirm, that her branch of the Hemmings family is descended from Peter Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings and the son of Elizabeth Hemings and an English sea captain. Peter worked as a cook and brewer at Monticello before being granted his freedom in 1827.

While I found Anita’s family history and Jillian’s premise
fascinating, what interested me most as I continued to research was how Anita made her way to Vassar and lived her life as a white woman there, and how her roommate almost derailed her at the eleventh hour. In none of the articles I read regarding Anita Hemmings was her roommate’s name ever mentioned, nor was it readily available in the Vassar archives. I did not want the woman who was so happy to stay anonymous in the newspapers of the era to remain so more than a century later, and thankfully, after several research trips, her files were found.

Anita’s roommate was Louise Taylor, a girl known by the nickname “Lulu” (rather than “Lottie,” as I call her in the book). She was born and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, and lived comfortably, but nothing like the millionaire’s Gilded Age life that I gave her in the novel. Her father was not a turn-of-the-century tycoon, but a surveyor, engineer, and postmaster of South Orange. After Vassar, Louise went on to earn her master’s degree in English literature at New York University and then taught history and mythology at schools in South Orange until the 1930s. She never married and had no children, which gave her ample time to keep tabs on Anita and her family.

Louise and Anita roomed together for two years, not one, as I write in the book. And though newspapers at the time say that Anita did boast about family and connections, which led to her roommate’s suspicion, it was the article about Bessie Baker’s wedding to William Henry Lewis in Cambridge that was Anita’s ultimate undoing. This article ran in the
Boston Daily Globe
on September 24, 1896, at the start of Anita’s senior year, not in January as I have it, though Louise may not have acted on her suspicions until the end of their senior year, as reported by many papers at the time. (All the newspaper articles that I quote in the book ran in
1896 or 1897. The dates are off on a few to make them work in the context of the story, but they are accurately cited.)

I imagine Louise Taylor was none too happy that Vassar allowed Anita to graduate in 1897, and she was still incensed about it when she discovered that Anita’s daughter was a student there in the 1920s. She wrote several letters to Vassar president Henry Noble MacCracken explaining what she had to endure and hoping the school would not allow other girls to feel similar pain. MacCracken fought back, explaining they considered Ellen Love’s admission as a daughter of an alumna. He told Louise that Anita lodged the statement that her daughter did not know she had “negro blood in her veins” and the school took that as fact. Though it is a shameful point in Vassar’s history that they did not admit African-American students until the 1940s, MacCracken and Louise Taylor’s correspondence made it apparent that the school chose to admit Ellen despite knowing who her mother was, and that they kept her there in the face of Louise’s complaints.

Sadly, as is the case in regard to most women living in the 1800s, very few traces of Anita’s life exist, which is why her story was such a good candidate for historical fiction. As beautiful and intelligent as Anita was, I wanted to give her a romantic adventure in the book, but there was no way for me to know the details of Anita’s quotidian life at Vassar. The newspapers from the time did carry on about all the Ivy League men who were taken by her beauty, and, inspired by those reports, I created her romance with Porter Hamilton, an entirely fictional character. While I doubt that Anita was ever serious with any man while she was at school, she would certainly have danced and socialized with the many male college students who attended Vassar’s functions. As for Louise’s love life, she wasn’t lucky in love at school or after. And I don’t believe she
ever met Anita’s handsome brother, Frederick, though he reportedly did come visit his sister at Vassar despite his darker skin—darker than I describe in the book—which could have raised suspicions.

Though much of Anita’s life at Vassar had to be fictionalized, the way she ended up at Vassar has been documented. According to her prep school, Northfield Seminary (now Northfield Mount Hermon), she started passing as white when she applied and she and Bessie had already selected their first-choice colleges before they entered the school.

At the end of the nineteenth century, only three of the Seven Sisters schools accepted African-American students: Radcliffe, Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke. By the time Anita entered Vassar in 1893, Wellesley had had two African-American graduates, Harriet Rice in 1887 and Ella Smith in 1888. Mount Holyoke had graduated one African-American student, Hortense Parker in 1883, but at the time the school was a seminary (not the college it became in 1888) and the race of Miss Parker was only discovered when she arrived. Radcliffe had not graduated any African-American students when Anita entered Vassar, and would not until 1898, the same year that Mount Holyoke graduated an African-American from its college, but Radcliffe did not have the same restrictive policy as Vassar.

Because of these painfully low admissions statistics for African-Americans, I believe that Anita, her best friend, Bessie Baker, and Bessie’s younger sister Gertrude planned together where to apply to college for the best chances of acceptance. As Anita, Bessie, and Gertrude were coming into college in the classes of 1897, 1898, and 1900 respectively, they could not have been accepted to the same school, as even progressive Wellesley had never had three African-American students enrolled at the same time and would not for several
decades. Anita, being the lightest of the three, had the best chance to pass as white, and thus by going to Vassar, Anita left spaces open for the Baker sisters at Radcliffe and Wellesley. I also think that the Bakers and Anita knew about Alberta Scott—a fellow gifted African-American student—and her intentions to apply to Radcliffe the same year that Bessie was hoping for admission at Wellesley, since Alberta was from Cambridgeport and grew up close to the Baker sisters.

Anita’s decision to attend Vassar was therefore motivated by much more than wanting the best education; it also allowed her equally gifted friends to attend Seven Sisters schools. (Smith, Barnard, and Bryn Mawr did not graduate African-Americans until the twentieth century—1900, 1928, and 1931, respectively—and if you do not count Anita Hemmings or Ellen Love, Vassar did not graduate an African-American student until 1944, the very last of the Seven Sisters to do so.)

Although I do not include much about Anita’s life after Vassar in the book (except for my last chapter, which focuses on her daughter Ellen), it was a large part of my research and proved to be just as fascinating as her Vassar years.

Anita and her husband, Andrew, who were married in 1903, did end up living in Tennessee, but were back in Massachusetts in 1905 when Andrew was a postgraduate student at Harvard for the summer. The couple finally settled in New York City, where their children attended elite private schools, including Horace Mann and Friends Seminary. (Their son Andrew later transferred to Mount Hermon in Massachusetts.) Though Anita and her husband desperately wanted their children to be more academically inclined, Ellen and Andrew Jr. ended up inheriting their mother’s love for performing. Ellen went on to a successful Broadway career, opening in
Oklahoma!
and testing for
Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
, according to Jillian. Andrew Jr. inherited Anita’s voice and good looks and was a successful musician on radio and TV. He sang for band leader Mitch Miller, as well as with his band the Tune Twisters, and wrote many well-known commercial jingles.

I had many unexpected discoveries while researching this book, but one of the most important was the friendship between Anita and Bessie Baker. Bessie may not have finished Wellesley, but she went on to guide her children’s educations in Massachusetts and Paris and to support her husband’s distinguished career. William Henry Lewis was not only the first African-American all-American football player (as I mention in the book), but went on to be the first African-American appointed as an assistant U.S. attorney and then was appointed assistant attorney general in 1910. He was also a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and a leading voice for civil rights.

Bessie and William had three children together, and their son William Henry Lewis Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps, attending Harvard Law School and practicing with him. Their eldest daughter, Dorothy, graduated from Wellesley in 1920 and went on to marry a Belgian nobleman, while their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Radcliffe, but met a tragic end—hanging herself at her parents’ home in 1926 soon after she began working as a teacher at the Cambridge Latin School.

I have yet to discover if Bessie and Anita’s friendship was maintained after Anita and Andrew began living as white in New York, but I sincerely hope that it was. With fervency, I will continue to dig into their stories, even as I move on to other books, for after immersing myself in Anita’s bright, brilliant, turn-of-the-century world, I know she will never leave me.

My deepest gratitude to Kari-Lynn Rockefeller, my beloved friend, Vassar scholar, and the best research partner one could ever hope for. Kari, your passion and intelligence never cease to amaze me. Mary-Alice Farina, I am indebted to you for your help and constant encouragement. You were my other half at Vassar and always will be. Keisha Nishimura, thank you for lending your wisdom to this book and to my life. Juan Acosta, Marcus Barnes, Rebecca Brizi, Kristin Dailey, Christian Gabriel, Paola Mantilla, Dalia Rahman, Jamilyah Smith-Kanze, Kavita Srinivasan, Rashida Truesdale—your love and support continue to bolster me and my writing.

If it were not for Jillian Atkin Sim, Anita Hemmings’s great-granddaughter, Anita would be just another gifted, yet mostly unknown, African-American woman. I am so grateful for Jillian’s passion for her family history and for giving Anita a second life.

My editor, Sarah Cantin, yet again made my writing so much better with her superb edits. Sarah, your positivity and excellence in everything you do bring me infinite joy. Also at Atria, a giant thank-you to president and publisher Judith Curr, Tom Pitoniak, Carla Benton, Haley Weaver, Arielle Kane, and Tory Lowy.

Bridget Matzie, my wonderful, always insightful agent, deserves all the credit for giving this book legs and seeing the literary potential in Anita’s remarkable life from the very start. I’m also indebted to Elizabeth Ward, the first editor of this book, for her sharp eye and for helping me refine Anita’s story. Gilda Squire and Simone Cooper put their powerhouse PR and marketing skills behind me and my writing, and I’m so thankful to have such intelligent women on my side.

My research was hugely aided by the gifts of time and knowledge from Peter Weis, school archivist at Northfield Mount Hermon, who made Anita’s pre-Vassar education and the beauty of her prep school come alive for me. Dean Rogers and Ronald Patkus of the Vassar Archives & Special Collections Library deserve a world of appreciation, as they aided me in piecing Anita’s Vassar years together. And I’m thankful for the assistance of Patricia Hurley at Trinity Church Boston, Laura Reiner at Wellesley College, Myles Crowley at MIT, and for the research done by Nora Nercessian at Harvard Medical School.

I am indebted to my always supporters—Rebecca Frankel, Georgia Bobley, and the women of the Georgetown Book Club—and to my fantastic parents and my brother, Ken, who founded Loving Day, an annual celebration of
Loving v Virginia
, which struck down U.S. anti-miscegenation laws. I often thought of his tireless work for racial equality as I wrote. My husband, Craig Fischer, deserves buckets of gold for his patience and encouragement with this project. Craig, thank you for loving me as much as I love you.