Belle da Costa Greene: The Secret Life of a Groundbreaking Librarian

The Morgan Library's Centennial and Belle da Costa Greene

• 🏛️ The Morgan Library and Museum in NYC is celebrating its 100th anniversary as a public institution, a centennial marked by an exhibit honoring its first director, Belle da Costa Greene.
• 🔑 Greene was entrusted with organizing and accumulating the vast collections of J.P. Morgan and his son for over 40 years, shaping the institution into what it is today.
• 💖 She showed immense reverence and love for the materials, famously kissing French manuscripts before handling them for researchers.

A Groundbreaking Career and Hidden Identity

• 📜 Belle da Costa Greene was hired 120 years ago to manage the personal library of financier John Pierpont Morgan.
• 💰 Her salary of $10,000 a year (nearly $300,000 today) and her role made her a celebrity in the papers, affording her respect often denied to unmarried women of her era.
• 🎭 Greene was a complex personality, described as gruff, charming, manly, feminine, silly, and dead serious, reflecting a life of hiding a significant secret.

Uncovering Belle's True Story

• 🔍 Biographer Jean Strauss investigated Greene's life, discovering that she had destroyed nearly all her personal papers.
• 🌍 Clues led Strauss to Washington D.C., where Greene's birth certificate revealed her birth name, Belle Marian Greener, and her race as 'colored,' not Portuguese as she had claimed.
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Belle was African-American, the daughter of Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard's first black graduate and a pioneering diplomat and professor.

The Choice to Pass and Family Legacy

• ✊ Passing for white was a choice her mother, Genevieve Fleet, believed was best for her children's future in a society with racial barriers.
• ⛪ Belle's maternal family, the Fleets, were founders of Mount Zion Church in Georgetown, a community hub and part of the Underground Railroad.
• 🖼️ Descendants of the Fleet family express awe at the achievements of their cousin, a "little black woman from Georgetown" who built such a significant legacy.

Enduring Legacy and Identity

• ✊ Greene's choice to pass was deeply influenced by her upbringing and societal pressures, making it difficult to be recognized for her capabilities as a Black woman.
• 🌟 The exhibit highlights Greene's final manuscript acquisitions, including a Frederick Douglass letter and an Ethiopian gospel book, prompting speculation about whether these reflect a fuller embrace of her heritage.
• ✅ Belle da Costa Greene is now celebrated not just as a scholar and librarian, but for the woman she truly was, underscoring the right to define one's own identity.