Belle Marion Greener/Belle da Costa Green

Belle is a Black woman who is living as a white woman, the result of her mother identifying their race as “White” on a Census question. Her birth name is Belle Marion Greener, but she adopts the name Belle da Costa Green with the change in her racial notation. While Belle has light skin, she notes that she looks more Black than her sisters. There is a side of her that struggles with the lie, even though she knows that her life would have been very different if she had lived as a Black woman during this time.

Belle is the daughter of Richard Greener and Genevieve Fleet Greener. Richard is a Civil Rights Activist, and Belle feels down about the fact that she lives as a white, partly because of that. Genevieve depends heavily on Belle, a fact that Belle occasionally...