Inequality

Historically, race and gender have set the stage for inequality. Belle da Costa Greene lives and works in New York in the early 1900s, at a time when Blacks and women faced inequality in their everyday lives, often being ostracized or facing dangerous situation simply because of skin color and/or gender. Belle's family is Black, but her mother makes the decision to live as white, possibly because they all have light skins and acceptable features.

Belle knows that her siblings carry the burden of passing for white as part of their everyday lives, but she carries a greater burden because she chooses not to follow the safe career route to become a teacher. Instead, she becomes the personal librarian for financier John Pierpont Morgan, which puts her in a position to travel through high social circles and means she is under greater scrutiny than her...