Stories · Film · 1949
Lost Boundaries
A New England doctor and his family, taken for white by their town for years, see their history made public, and the story becomes a Hollywood film.
Dr. Albert C. Johnston and his wife, Thyra, were both Black and light enough to be taken for white. The family settled in New Hampshire, first in Gorham and then in Keene. There he practiced as a country doctor and radiologist for white patients who assumed he was one of them. Their children grew up not knowing their family's history.
The secret came out in pieces. When Johnston applied for a Navy commission in 1940, the Navy turned him down because of his ancestry. His son learned the truth as a teenager and later spoke about it in public. In December 1947 the journalist William L. White told the family's story in Reader's Digest, followed by a short book, Lost Boundaries.
Louis de Rochemont produced the film version in 1949, with Mel Ferrer as the doctor. It was shot on location in New England. Atlanta's censor board banned it, and de Rochemont challenged Georgia's ban in court.
Why it still matters
Lost Boundaries shows passing as something a whole family lived with, sometimes without knowing it, until a government form and a magazine story made it public. The town's reaction was the story Hollywood chose to tell. What the family lost in private was harder to put on screen.