" In 1976, Kentucky state legislator Mae Street Kidd
successfully sponsored a resolution ratifying the 13th, 14th, and
15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was fitting that a
black woman should initiate the state's formal repudiation of
slavery; that it was Mrs. Kidd was all the more appropriate. Born
in Millersburg, Kentucky, in 1904 to a black mother and a white
father, Kidd grew up to be a striking woman with fair skin and
light hair. Sometimes accused of trying to pass for white in a
segregated society, Kidd felt that she was doing the opposite --
choosing to assert her black identity. Passing for Black is her
story, in her own words, of how she lived in this racial limbo and
the obstacles it presented. As a Kentucky woman of color during a
pioneering period of minority and women's rights, Kidd seized every
opportunity to get ahead. She attended a black boarding academy
after high school and went on to become a successful businesswoman
in the insurance and cosmetic industries in a time when few women,
black or white, were able to compete in a male-dominated society.
She also served with the American Red Cross in England during World
War II. It was not until she was in her sixties that she turned to
politics, sitting for seventeen years in the Kentucky General
Assembly -- one of the few black women ever to do so -- where she
crusaded vigorously for housing rights. Her story -- presented as
oral history elicited and edited by Wade Hall -- provides an
important benchmark in African American and women's studies and
endures as a vital document in Kentucky history.
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