“Just Because I am a Librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”
With this breezy pronouncement, Belle da Costa Greene handily differentiated herself from most librarians.
She stood out for other reasons, too.
In the early 20th century – a time when men held most positions of authority – Greene was a celebrated book agent, a curator and the first director of the Morgan Library. She also earned US$10,000 a year, about $280,000 today, while other librarians were making roughly $400.
She was also a Black woman who passed as white.
Born in 1879, Belle was the daughter of two light-skinned Black Americans, Genevieve Fleet and Richard T. Greener, the first Black man to graduate from Harvard. When the two separated in 1897, Fleet changed the family’s last name to Greene and, along with her five children, crossed the color line. Belle Marion Greener became Belle da Costa Greene – the “da Costa” a subtle claim to her Portuguese ancestry.One of the nine known portraits of Belle da Costa Greene that photographer Clarence H. White made in 1911. Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
When banking magnate J.P. Morgan sought a librarian in 1905, his nephew Junius Morgan recommended Greene, who had been one of his co-workers at the Princeton Library.
Henceforth, Greene’s life didn’t just kick into a higher gear. It was supercharged. She became a lively fixture at social gatherings among America’s wealthiest families. Her world encompassed Gilded Age mansions, country retreats, rare book enclaves, auction houses, museums and art galleries. Bold, vivacious and glamorous, the keenly intelligent Greene attracted attention wherever she went.
I found myself drawn to the worlds Greene entered and the people she described in her lively letters to her lover, art scholar Bernard Berenson. In 2024, I published a book, “Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene,” which explores her voice, her self-invention, her love of art and literature, and her path-breaking work as a librarian.
Yet I’m often asked whether Greene mentions her passing as white in her writings. She did not. Greene was one of hundreds of thousands of light-skinned Black Americans who passed as white in the Jim Crow era. While speculation about Greene’s background circulated in her lifetime, nothing was confirmed until historian Jean Strouse revealed the identities of Greene’s parents in her 1999 biography, “Morgan: American Financier.” Until that point, only Greene’s mother and siblings knew the story of their Black heritage.
“Passing” can often raise more questions than answers. But Greene did not largely define herself through one category, such as her racial identity. Instead, she constructed a self through the things she loved.
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‘I love this life – don’t you?’
In my view, any consideration of Greene’s attitudes toward her own race must remain an open question. And uncertainty can be acknowledged – even embraced – with judgments suspended.
The Morgan Library & Museum currently has an exhibition on Greene that will run until May 4, 2025 – one that’s already generated debates about Greene and the significance of her passing.
One section of the exhibition, “Questioning the Color Line,” includes novels on passing, paintings such as Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s “The Octoroon Girl,” photographs of Greene, and clips from Oscar Micheaux’s 1932 film “Veiled Aristocrats” and John M. Stahl’s 1934 film “Imitation of Life,” which portray painful scenes between white-passing characters and their family members.
None of these objects clarifies Greene’s particular relationship to passing. Instead, they place the librarian within melodramatic and conventional representations about passing that stress self-division and angst.
We don’t know – perhaps we will never know – whether Greene had similar moments of self-doubt.Greene frequently received glowing press coverage. The Morgan Library & Museum
Yet some critics have concluded as much. In his review of the exhibition for The New Yorker, critic Hilton Als laments what Greene’s passing had cost her. He describes her as a “girl who loved power,” a woman who “became a member of another race – not Black or white but alternately grandiose and self-despising.”
There’s a lot of certainty in such a pronouncement – and scant evidence furnished to support such declarations.
New York Times columnist John McWhorter takes issue with Als’s depiction of the librarian’s passing in a Jan. 23, 2025, article.
Citing passages from her letters in which Greene excitedly describes reading the Arabic folktales “The Thousand and One Nights” and seeing exhibitions of modern art, McWhorter asks readers to reconsider this “witty, puckish soul who savored books and art” and “had an active social life.”
What if Greene gave her race little thought, McWhorter wonders. What if she simply saw the notion of race and racial categorization as “a fiction” and instead lived her life to its fullest? Of course, her light skin afforded her the opportunity that other Black people of her era didn’t have. But does that necessarily mean that she was self-loathing or conflicted?
“[W]e are all wearing trousers and I love them,” Greene writes in one letter to Berenson, adding, “The Library grows more wonderful every day and I am terribly happy in my work here … I love this life – don’t you?”
The connoisseur was not the only contemporary who admired Greene’s effervescence. In “The Living Present,” an account of the activities of women before and after World War II, Greene’s friend Gertrude Atherton paid tribute to Greene, a “girl so fond of society, so fashionable in dress and appointments” that she could impress any stranger with her “overflowing joie de vivre.”
Greene dressed to be noticed – and she was. Meta Harrsen, the librarian Greene hired in 1922, offers a rare eye-witness account. On the day Greene interviewed Harrsen, “she wore a dress of dark red Italian brocade shot with silver threads, a gold braided girdle, and an emerald necklace.”
Greene understood well the power of clothes to project a distinct identity – a highly crafted one in this case, and one befitting a connoisseur of rare books.Greene poses for a Time magazine portrait in 1915. The Morgan Library & Museum
At that, she excelled. She became known for her stunning acquisition coups: her purchase of 16 rare editions of the works of English printer William Caxton at an auction; her procurement of the highly coveted Crusader’s Bible through a private negotiation; and her acquisition of the Spanish Apocalypse Commentary, a medieval text written by a Spanish monk that Greene was able to buy at a steep discount.
To me, a 1915 photo captures Greene’s confidence and aura more than any other image of the librarian.
She posed in her home and wasn’t shot in soft focus with a studio backdrop as other photographs tend to portray her. Sitting on the arm of a large chair upholstered in a tapestry weave, she wears an elaborate hat with a large ostrich plume, a high-necked blouse under a long, loosely belted jacket with a ruffled cuff over a long dark skirt. The decor is no less striking: Flemish tapestries decorate the walls behind her, and a liturgical vestment is draped over the bookcase. Looking directly at the viewer, Greene is assured and poised.
Greene’s stylish flair was not simply decorative. It was a testament to her vibrant personality and the joy she took in her work. Rather than judge her according to contemporary notions of racial identity, I prefer to marvel over her achievements and how she became a model for generations of future librarians.
Greene didn’t just pass. She surpassed – in spectacular ways.
George Plimpton’s ‘Paper Lion’ Exposed the Brutal Reality of NFL Training Camp in 1966
How writer George Plimpton went undercover as a Detroit Lions quarterback in 1963 and created the sports journalism classic ‘Paper Lion.’ Discover the bruising truths he revealed about NFL training camp and what separates fans from players.
Green Bay Packers wide receiver Romeo Doubs (87) and Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold (6) show off their athleticism on Sept. 7, 2025. AP Photo/Matt Ludtke
George Plimpton’s 1966 nonfiction classic ‘Paper Lion’ revealed the bruising truths of Detroit Lions training camp
Stephen Siff, Miami University As the Detroit Lions barrel toward a Thanksgiving Day game with the Green Bay Packers, some die-hard fans may be fantasizing about what it would be like to be on the field themselves: calling plays from the Lions huddle, accepting the snap from between a crouching center’s thighs, and spinning to hand off the football before the defensive linemen come crashing down. In 1963, Lions head coach George Wilson allowed writer and Paris Review editor George Plimpton to enact that fantasy. With a Sports Illustrated contract in hand, Plimpton convinced Lions management to allow him to enter preseason training camp at Cranbrook, the private boys school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. His plan was to go undercover as a rookie quarterback for a magazine article that would reach dramatic culmination when he called a series of plays in a game of professional football. No one expected the amateur athlete to survive for long on a field with real-life Lions. But in writing about the experience, Plimpton turned off-field fandom and on-field bumbling into literary gold.Little, Brown reissued Paper Lion in 2016.Little, Brown His resulting 1966 book, “Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback,” became a bestseller that was praised by The New York Times as “one of the greatest books written on sports, and the most thoroughly engaging book on any subject in recent memory.” A 1968 movie based on the book starred Alan Alda as Plimpton and members of the 1967 Lions team as themselves. Decades before I became a journalism professor at Miami University of Ohio, I discovered Plimpton’s sportswriting from reading the paperback versions I found on my parents’ bookshelves. Plimpton was a leading member of a mid-20th-century class of literary journalists, including Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Gay Talese and Norman Mailer, who were becoming known for applying novelistic techniques and sometimes personal, subjective perspectives to nonfiction. While the other literati tackled heavy topics, Plimpton’s engaging, conversational prose goofed around on the fringes of pro sports. Many of his books followed the same “participatory journalism” formula. He wrote about pitching against MLB all-stars, traveling with the PGA tour, boxing a bout against Archie Moore and playing with the Boston Bruins. Those were just the full-length books. Other television and magazine projects had Plimpton competing in tennis and bridge; performing stand-up comedy; acting in a Western; playing with the New York Philharmonic; and attempting to be an aerialist with the circus. However, he is best known for trying his hand quarterbacking for the Lions.
Posh writer meets the gridiron
In some ways, Plimpton seemed exactly the wrong person for this job. The possessor of a distinctively old money accent and patrician wealth and manners, he was founding editor of The Paris Review and in 1967 a mainstay of literary salons in Paris and New York. “Author, critic, interviewer, party-giver … friend of everybody, gifted, personable, energetic, bright, with-it, rich, a legend in his own time,” The New York Times gushed. Just the kind of person whom your average football fan might enjoy seeing knocked flat.American journalist and literary critic George Plimpton was no fan of pain, and that limited his ability on the football field.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Plimpton joined a team he described as recovering from scandal. After ending the 1962 season with an 11-3 record and a Playoff Bowl victory for third place in the NFL, the NFL commissioner’s office fined six Lions for gambling on the championship game between Green Bay and New York. More significant on field, the commissioner suspended Lions great defensive tackle and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Alex Karras for one year. Without him, the Lions would end the 1963 season 5-8-1. Plimpton wrote his way onto the team by promising to “just hang around on the periphery of things and not bother anyone, just try to participate enough to get the feel of things.” Wilson agreed, and Plimpton arrived at training camp a few months later with his own football, purchased from an army-navy store in Times Square, and a “mild fiction” about having played quarterback at Harvard and for the nonexistent Newfoundland Newfs. Plimpton’s attempt at deception might raise ethical questions; however, the joke is always on him. The coaching staff seemed to have thought it would be hilarious if anyone on the team actually took the gangly 36-year-old with the nasal accent as a professional football player. It seems unlikely that anyone did. “I never had the temerity to pretend I was something that I wasn’t,” Plimpton wrote. “The team caught on quickly enough.” At camp, Plimpton hung around the dining hall and sat in the back of team meetings. A master of small talk, he lets the reader eavesdrop on conversations with Hall of Famers Karras, Dick “Night Train” Lane and Joe Schmidt. Plimpton takes us with him one night to a bar frequented by coaches, where we listen in rounds of liars’ poker with Wilson, Scooter McLean and Les Bingaman. We tag along as he chats with Karras at Lindell’s A.C., the bar the player owned in downtown Detroit at the time.
Lessons in grit
At training camp, Plimpton faced the teasing of players but earned respect by facing the brutality of sport and by persisting despite the inevitability of pain. He never played football in school, beyond a beery game between Harvard Crimson and Harvard Lampoon, and did not know the basics of playing quarterback. Several days into camp, he was allowed to participate in a play where, as quarterback, he was supposed to quickly hand off the ball to another player. “At ‘two’ the snap back came,” Plimpton wrote. “I began to turn without the proper grip on the ball, moving too nervously, and I fumbled the ball, gaping at it, mouth ajar, as it fell and bounced twice, once away from me, then back, and rocked back and forth gaily at my feet. I flung myself on it (…) and I heard the sharp strange whack of gear, the grunts, and then a quick sudden weight whooshed the air out of me.” The same thing happened when Plimpton was allowed to take the field in an annual intra-squad game played in Pontiac. Over his first three plays he lost 20 yards by falling down, getting knocked over by his own teammates and being literally picked from the ground by a zealous defender. On the bus ride home, Plimpton admitted to Wilson that he didn’t like being hit. The coach gently explained that “love of physical contact” was necessary to make it in pro football. “When kids, out in a park, chose of sides for tackle rather than touch, the guys that want to be ends and go out for the passes, or even quarterback, because they think subconsciously they can get rid of the ball before being hit, those guys don’t end up as football players,” Wilson mused. “They become great tennis players, or skiers, or high jumpers. It doesn’t mean they lack courage or competitiveness.” “But the guys who put up their hands to be tackles or guards, or fullbacks who run not for daylight but for trouble – those are the ones who will make it as football players.” This quality of great football players – an irrational enthusiasm for bruising physical contact – is celebrated by Plimpton in the veteran Lions who take him into their orbit. He becomes friends with Karras and offensive lineman John Gordy, in particular, and shoots the breeze on topics ranging from the NFL commissioner to Adolf Hitler. In a subsequent book, Plimpton goes with the pair to a madcap golf tournament and starts a ridiculous business venture, suggesting the on-field madness necessary to succeed in football bleeds into off-field life as well. But it is not Plimpton’s way to delve into the psychology of his idols. Rather, he listens as they spin tales that show how reckless the grown men who run toward trouble really are.Stephen Siff, Associate Professor of Journalism, Miami University
George Plimpton’s 1966 nonfiction classic ‘Paper Lion’ revealed the bruising truths of Detroit Lions training camp
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PG&E Donates $1 Million to Local Food Banks to Help Feed Families
PG&E donates $1 million to local food banks across Northern and Central California—equivalent to about 3 million meals—supporting 38 food banks serving 47 counties.
Just in time for the holidays, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced a $1 million donation to local food banks across Northern and Central California—support aimed at meeting a surge in demand as more families and seniors struggle to put food on the table. According to PG&E, the contribution is expected to provide the equivalent of roughly 3 million meals and will support 38 food banks serving 47 counties within PG&E’s service territory.
A third major food-bank contribution since September
The $1 million gift marks the third food-bank-focused contribution since September from PG&E or The PG&E Corporation Foundation (the PG&E Foundation). Combined, those efforts bring PG&E’s total community food support in 2025 to $2.37 million. PG&E emphasized that the funding for these charitable contributions comes from PG&E shareholders—not customers.
Food banks facing record-breaking demand
Food banks across California are reporting pressure levels not seen since the pandemic. Officials with the California Association of Food Banks say demand has reached record highs, driven in part by an unexpected surge during the federal government shutdown this fall. “California food banks experienced an unexpected surge with the [federal government] shutdown this fall. So, we reached out for help on their behalf and PG&E responded,” said Stacia Levenfeld, Chief Executive Officer of the California Association of Food Banks. “Their $1 million gift to food banks throughout Northern and Central California will have a meaningful impact on the lives of millions of people this holiday season and help food banks continue their critical work in our communities.” PG&E leaders framed the donation as an extension of a longstanding partnership with food bank networks. “We are grateful to help local food banks fulfill their mission during this time of increasing demand, especially as more families and seniors are struggling through the holiday season,” said Carla Peterman, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs, PG&E Corporation and Chair of The PG&E Corporation Foundation Board. “Our longstanding partnership with the California Association of Food Banks supports the safety net that is our local food banks.”
Where the 2025 food support has gone
PG&E outlined additional contributions made earlier in the year:
September: The PG&E Foundation awarded $1.12 million to support local food banks, tribal food banks, and senior meal programs.
November: The PG&E Foundation donated $250,000 to the California Association of Food Banks’ Emergency Response Fund.
Equity-focused grant distribution
The California Association of Food Banks notes that while California produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, more than one in five residents still don’t know where their next meal will come from. Food insecurity rates are even higher in many communities of color. PG&E said grant amounts awarded to local organizations will account for county poverty and unemployment levels, using a formula from the California Department of Social Services. The goal: promote equity by directing more support to counties with higher need.
About the PG&E Corporation Foundation and PG&E
The PG&E Corporation Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, separate from PG&E and sponsored by PG&E Corporation. PG&E is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than 16 million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. More information is available at pge.com and pge.com/news.
Why this matters
As food banks brace for sustained demand beyond the holiday season, large-scale donations like PG&E’s can help stabilize local supply—especially when distributed with an equity lens that targets the counties facing the steepest economic pressures. For families, seniors, and individuals navigating rising costs, the impact is immediate: more meals available now, and stronger community support systems heading into the new year. Community links:
In the 1970s, Lynwood, CA, dreamed of a downtown mall anchored by Montgomery Ward. Decades later, the empty lots told a story of ambition, delay, and renewal.
In the early 1970s, Lynwood, California, dreamed big.
City leaders envisioned a new, modern downtown — a sprawling shopping and auto mall that would bring jobs, shoppers, and a sense of pride back to this small but growing city in the southeast corner of Los Angeles County. At the heart of the plan stood a gleaming new Montgomery Ward department store, which opened around 1973 and promised to anchor a larger commercial center that never fully came.
But for those of us who grew up in Lynwood during that time, the promise never quite materialized.
Instead, we remember acres of empty lots, chain-link fences, and faded “Coming Soon” signs that sat for decades — silent witnesses to a dream deferred.
The Vision That Stalled
In 1973, Lynwood’s Redevelopment Agency launched what it called Project Area A — an ambitious plan to clear and rebuild much of the city’s downtown core. Small businesses and homes were bought out, land was assembled, and the city floated bonds to support new construction.
For a brief moment, it looked as if the plan might work. Montgomery Ward opened its doors, serving as a retail beacon for the area. Yet the rest of the mall — the shops, restaurants, and auto dealerships — never came.
By the mid-1970s, much of downtown had been bulldozed, but little replaced it. And by the time Ward closed its Lynwood location in 1986, the vast lots surrounding it had become symbols of frustration and unfulfilled potential.
What Happened?
Some longtime residents whispered about corruption or backroom deals — the kind of speculation that grows when visible progress stalls.
But newspaper archives and redevelopment records tell a more complex story.
Lynwood’s plans collided with a series of hard realities:
The construction of the Century Freeway (I-105) disrupted neighborhoods and depressed land values. Environmental cleanup and ownership disputes slowed development. Economic shifts in retail — as malls in nearby Downey, South Gate, and Paramount attracted anchor stores — drained the local market. And later, political infighting among city officials made sustained redevelopment almost impossible.
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To this day, there’s no public record of proven corruption directly tied to the 1970s mall plan. What did exist was a tangle of bureaucracy, economic change, and missed opportunity — a perfect storm that left Lynwood’s heart half-built and half-forgotten.
Growing Up Among the Vacant Lots
For those of us who were kids in Lynwood during that era, the story is more personal.
We remember the sight of the Montgomery Ward building — modern and hopeful at first, then shuttered and fading by the mid-1980s.
We remember riding bikes past the empty dirt fields that were supposed to become shopping plazas. And we remember the quiet frustration of adults who had believed the city’s promises.
Those empty blocks became our playgrounds — but they also became symbols of the gap between what Lynwood was and what it wanted to be.
A New Chapter: Plaza México and Beyond
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the dream finally resurfaced in a new form.
Developers transformed the long-idle site into Plaza México, a vibrant commercial and cultural hub that celebrates Mexican and Latin American heritage.
It took nearly 30 years for Lynwood’s downtown to come alive again.
The result is beautiful — but it’s also bittersweet for those who remember how long the land sat empty, and how many local businesses and residents were displaced in pursuit of a dream that took a generation to fulfill.
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Looking Back
The story of Lynwood’s lost mall isn’t just about urban planning.
It’s about hope, change, and resilience. It’s about how a community tried to reinvent itself — and how the children who grew up watching that effort still carry its memory.
Sometimes, when I drive through that stretch of Imperial Highway and Long Beach Boulevard, I still imagine what might have been: the bustling mall that never was, and the voices of a neighborhood caught between ambition and uncertainty.
📚 Further Reading
Montgomery Ward will close its Lynwood store. (Jan 3 1986) — Los Angeles Times.
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Stephen Siff, Associate Professor of Journalism, Miami University
