Belle da Costa Greene

Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950) held a pivotal role at the Pierpont Morgan Library as its first director, and she was a prominent social fixture amongst the rich and famous of New York. Her career and social circles were not possible for a Black woman to cultivate in early twentieth-century America, yet Greene accessed them by passing as white. Greene, her mother, and siblings did so after moving to New York in the late 1880s, separating themselves from the Black community they were part of in D.C. and changing their surname from Greener to Greene. She meticulously reinvented her identity, keeping much of her private life a mystery; the displayed books explore her work for the Morgan Library, the social spheres she occupied, and her decision to pass as white.