The Hidden Story of Pearl Robinson: Unraveling a Century-Long Mystery

The photograph from 1912 has captivated historians and genealogists for over a century, revealing a complex narrative that challenges our understanding of race, family, and identity in America. Discovered in August 2019 during the demolition of a Victorian house in Natchez, Mississippi, this enigmatic photograph found its way to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. It was here that Dr. Angela Foster, a senior archivist specializing in African American genealogy and post-Reconstruction Southern history, first encountered it.

Inside a cardboard box, Dr. Foster found a formal family portrait mounted on thick cardboard, adorned with the typical embellishments of early 20th-century photography. The image depicted a Black family of seven, dressed in their Sunday best, posed against a backdrop of classical columns and draped curtains. The photograph bore the stamp of Morrison and Sons Photography in Natchez, Mississippi, along with a handwritten date: April 1912.

Dr. Foster had cataloged thousands of similar photographs throughout her 20-year career. These images represented Black families who had pooled precious resources to document their existence, dignity, and humanity during an era that systematically denied them all three. For many families, these fragile images were the only proof that their ancestors had lived and thrived against the odds.

As she examined the photograph, Dr. Foster was struck by a peculiar detail. One of the young girls in the front row, seated to the left of the mother, had features that seemed incongruous with the rest of the family. Her hair, although braided like her sisters, was straight and light-colored, almost blonde. Her skin, visible on her face and hands, appeared pale—unmistakably white. The realization hit Dr. Foster: a white child was posing as a full member of a Black family in Mississippi in 1912, at the heart of Jim Crow segregation, where such a scenario would have been not only scandalous but potentially deadly.

What was this child doing in this photograph? Who was she? How had her existence remained hidden for over a century? In 1912 Mississippi, the racial order was absolute and brutally enforced. The state had led the South in codifying white supremacy into law, implementing poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that effectively disenfranchised Black voters. Segregation permeated every aspect of daily life—schools, churches, water fountains, and cemeteries were all separated. Interracial relationships were not just illegal; they were potentially fatal.

The photograph in Dr. Foster’s hands was not merely unusual; it was impossible. A white child could not have been publicly recognized as part of a Black family without catastrophic consequences for everyone involved. The photography studio would have been shut down, the family would have faced violence or ostracism, and the child would have been taken away by authorities and placed in a white institution. Yet here was the evidence: a professionally produced formal portrait depicting exactly such a situation.

Determined to uncover the truth, Dr. Foster began her investigation by researching the Morrison and Sons photography studio, which had operated in Natchez from 1885 to 1923, primarily serving the Black community during a time when most white-owned studios refused to photograph Black subjects or relegated them to back entrances and off-hours appointments. Founded by Abraham Morrison, a formerly enslaved man who learned photography during Reconstruction, the studio documented the lives of Black families throughout Adams County.

Dr. Foster discovered a ledger entry from April 14, 1912, that contained the information she was seeking: “Robinson family portrait, complete family, seven people, paid in full, $250.” The name Robinson provided her with a concrete lead. She turned to census records, church registries, and property documents to reconstruct the history of a family that had lived and died in Mississippi over a century ago.

However, the census records from 1910 listed only Samuel Robinson, 42 years old, a blacksmith; his wife Hattie, 38; and their children Marcus, Joseph, Bessie, Ruth, and Sarah, all identified as Black. There was no mention of a seventh member—a white child living in the household. This absence suggested something more deliberate than a clerical error. Someone had gone to great lengths to ensure that the existence of this child was never documented, fueling Dr. Foster’s determination to uncover her identity.

The breakthrough came from an unexpected source. While sifting through digitized church records of Black congregations in Natchez, Dr. Foster discovered a baptism record from the Zion Baptist Church that contained an entry from March 1906: “Pearl, baby daughter of Samuel and Hattie Robinson, baptized today in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, born February 2, 1906.” The entry was notable for what it did not contain—unlike other baptism records, there was no notation of the child’s race, nor any indication of her ancestry beyond the Robinson name.

Now armed with a name, Dr. Foster delved deeper. Pearl Robinson, born to Samuel and Hattie Robinson, would have been six years old in 1912, matching the age of the girl in the photograph. But how could a white child be born to Black parents? Why would a Black family in Jim Crow Mississippi claim a white child as their own, knowing the dangers such a claim could bring?

Dr. Foster reached out to genealogical societies and DNA database administrators, hoping to find living descendants of the Robinson family who might have preserved oral histories or family documents that could explain the mystery. Her inquiries eventually led her to Lorraine Washington, an 84-year-old retired nurse living in Chicago, whose grandmother had been Bessie Robinson, the teenager standing in the back row of the photograph.

“Pearl,” Lorraine said when Dr. Foster mentioned the name, her voice catching with emotion. “I haven’t heard anyone say that name in 40 years. My grandmother spoke of Pearl, but she made me promise never to tell anyone outside the family. She said some secrets had to remain buried to protect the people we love.”

Lorraine paused, and Dr. Foster could hear her breathing heavily on the other end of the line. “But I’m 84, Dr. Foster. Everyone who could be hurt by this truth is long dead. Maybe it’s time Pearl’s story was finally told.”

What Lorraine revealed during the next three hours fundamentally changed Dr. Foster’s understanding of the photograph, the Robinson family, and the complex realities of race in Jim Crow South. Pearl Robinson had indeed been a white child, but her whiteness was not a matter of parentage; it was a medical condition. Pearl was born with albinism, a genetic disorder that prevents the body from producing melanin, the pigment that gives color to the skin, hair, and eyes.

Today, albinism is well understood, and those who have it receive support and accommodations. But in 1906 rural Mississippi, a Black woman giving birth to a white-skinned child with blonde hair and blue eyes would have immediately faced suspicion, accusation, and potentially lethal violence. Lorraine recounted how her grandmother, Bessie, had been 12 years old when Pearl was born and remembered the terror that gripped the Robinson household in the days following her birth.

Hattie Robinson had labored for 18 hours before delivering a healthy girl. But when the midwife lifted the baby into the light and saw her pale skin and colorless hair, she gasped and nearly dropped the infant. Samuel Robinson, waiting in the next room, rushed in to find his wife crying and the midwife backing away from the door, already formulating accusations that could destroy the family.

“That’s not a colored baby,” the midwife had said, pointing at the newborn. “That white baby is cotton. It can’t possibly be Samuel’s.” What happened next was etched into family memory for generations. Samuel Robinson, a man known for his quiet dignity and careful temperament, stood tall and fixed the midwife with a gaze that stopped her in her tracks.

He explained in words that Bessie would remember for the rest of her life that his grandmother, a woman who had been enslaved on a Virginia plantation, had been born with the same condition—white skin, white hair, eyes that could not tolerate the sun. She had lived her entire life as a Black woman, despite looking white, because everyone who knew her understood she was Black.

The condition was hereditary, skipping generations and appearing without warning. Pearl was his daughter, his blood, and anyone who said otherwise would answer to him. The midwife had been skeptical but ultimately convinced—or perhaps simply unwilling to challenge a man with Samuel’s reputation in the community. She agreed to keep the birth confidential, recording Pearl as simply a girl with no notation of her appearance.

But the Robinsons knew that keeping the secret within the home would not be enough. Pearl’s condition would be visible to anyone who saw her, and in Jim Crow Mississippi, a white-skinned child in a Black family would raise questions that could not be safely answered. The family made a decision that would shape the next decade of their lives: Pearl would be hidden. She would not attend school, go to church, or be seen in public during daylight hours. She would exist only within the walls of the Robinson home, known only to family and a few trusted friends.

She would be loved, educated, and protected, but she would remain invisible to the outside world. This was the only way to keep her safe. For the first six years of her life, Pearl Robinson existed in a kind of twilight world. She knew every corner of her family’s modest home, every floorboard that creaked, every shadow cast by the sun filtering through the curtains.

Her siblings—Marcus, Joseph, Bessie, Ruth, and Sarah—adored her, taking turns reading to her, playing games with her, teaching her the lessons they learned in school that she could never attend. Her mother, Hattie, taught her to read and write, to sew and cook, to carry herself with the dignity the Robinson family valued above all else. Her father, Samuel, carved wooden toys for her, telling her stories of their ancestors and promising that one day, somehow, she would be able to live outdoors like everyone else.

But Pearl was not a child who could be easily contained. As she grew, she began to chafe against the restrictions that kept her confined. She would sneak to the windows to watch other children playing in the street. She would ask questions her parents could not answer. Why was she different? Why did she have to hide? Had she done something wrong? The pain in Hattie’s eyes when Pearl asked these questions was nearly unbearable.

The idea for the photograph had come from Pearl. In early 1912, when she was six years old, she overheard her parents discussing a family portrait they planned to have taken at Morrison’s studio. She begged to be included, pleading with tears streaming down her face, arguing that she was part of the family and deserved to be in the picture too.

Samuel and Hattie initially refused, explaining the dangers, trying to make her understand that a photograph could be seen by anyone, could raise questions they could not answer, and could put the entire family at risk. But Pearl persisted with the determination that would define her life. She pointed out that she could pass for white, and if no one questioned her presence in the photograph, her parents could simply say she was the daughter of a neighbor or a visitor—just another child Robinson, which of course she was.

The photograph would remain private, shown only to family members, preserved as proof that she had existed, that she had been loved, that she was part of something larger than herself. Against their better judgment, Samuel and Hattie agreed. They dressed Pearl in a dress identical to Sarah’s, braided her colorless hair to match her sister’s style, and posed her between them as if she were just another Robinson child.

Abraham Morrison, the photographer, asked no questions. He had seen too much in his years of documenting Black families to be surprised by anything and understood that some things were better left unspoken. The photograph was taken on April 14, 1912. It would be the only image of Pearl Robinson that would ever exist.

Dr. Angela Foster published her initial findings in the Journal of Southern History in the spring of 2020, presenting the photograph and the fragmentary evidence she had compiled about Pearl Robinson’s existence. The article generated immediate interest from medical historians, geneticists, and scholars of race relations in the Jim Crow South. Pearl’s case was not entirely unique; there were scattered historical records of Black individuals with albinism navigating the treacherous waters of American racial categorization. But the photograph provided unprecedented documentation of how a family chose to handle an impossible situation.

The article also caught the attention of Dr. Yolanda Freeman, a geneticist at Vanderbilt University specializing in hereditary patterns of albinism in African American populations. She contacted Dr. Foster with a proposal: if living descendants of the Robinson family could be identified and were willing to participate, DNA testing could confirm Pearl’s relationship to the family and potentially identify other relatives who carried the gene for albinism. The results could contribute to both historical understanding and ongoing medical research.

Lorraine Washington, now 85, agreed to participate in the study after lengthy discussions with her surviving siblings and children. She had spent her entire adult life keeping the family secret, honoring the promise she made to her grandmother, Bessie. But times had changed, she reasoned, and the truth could no longer hurt Pearl or anyone who had known her. Perhaps it could even help others—families facing albinism today who might find comfort or guidance in knowing they were not alone, that others had faced similar challenges and found ways to survive.

DNA results confirmed what family oral history had maintained for over a century: Pearl Robinson had been the biological daughter of Samuel and Hattie Robinson, carrying genetic markers consistent with African American ancestry on both sides of her family. The results also pinpointed the specific genetic mutation responsible for her albinism, a variant of the TYR gene that was relatively common in West African populations and had been silently passed down through generations of the Robinson family before expressing itself in Pearl.

But the DNA testing revealed something else—something no one had anticipated. When Lorraine’s results were compared with public genealogical databases, a close genetic match appeared. A relative living in Mississippi shared enough DNA with Lorraine to be a descendant of one of the Robinson children. When Dr. Foster traced the connection, she discovered that this person did not descend from Marcus, Joseph, Bessie, Ruth, or Sarah. This individual descended from Pea