The Tragic Mulatto
From The New York Times Magazine, January 1, 1995
Blacks who were light enough to pass for white--and did--were, in pre-Civil Rights America, as titillating as any tabloid story is today. Hollywood quickly picked up on the box-office potential of these tales and scripted story after story about the 'tragic mulatto,' usually female, who suffered because of the "dualing bloods running through her veins." For Fredricka Washington, these roles would become her bread and butter.
The slim, green-eyed actress made her theater debut at age 17 as a chorus girl in 'Shuffle Along.' The show included another chorus girl, Josephine Baker, whose scene-stealing and brown skin made her unpopular among the light-skinned dancers. Upon discovering that Baker's makeup had been dumped in the hallway, Washington made those responsible return the dancer's belongings. The two remained lifelong friends.
Washington dancing with
partner Al Moiret in 1928
In the 1920's, Washington toured Europe as part of a dance duo with Al Moiret. Otto Kahn, the millionaire, was so struck by her that he offered to pay for her dramatic education if she would pass for French. She refused.
The ambiguity of her race sometimes worked against her. In 'The Emperor Jones' with Paul Robeson, Washington's skin was darkened with makeup so audiences didn't think that Robeson was romancing a white woman. A founder of the Negro Actors Guild, Washington eventually retired from films altogether and became a drama editor and columnist for The People's Voice, a newspaper published by Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
In the movies, the tragic mulatto, like a Tolstoy
heroine, is always punished for her sexuality and her mixed race.
Washington, however, played the tragedy only on screen and remained,
until her death at age 90, black and proud. What she was so keenly
aware of was that the tragic mulatto was not so much about a
light-skinned black who wanted to be white as it was about a black person who lusted for the life chances that whiteness once signified. 