With the season finale of the Fade to White Podcast, Ep. 8, "Passing," host Jill Sim wishes to give thanks to you, the listeners!
See you in 2027!
The Fade to White Podcast Team
Jill Sim
Harrison Sim
Al Sim
Olivia Sim
17 Oct 2026
Season One Finale: Passing
With the discovery that Dr. Andrew J. Love and Anita Hemmings are both people of color who can pass for white, Jill has to reassess past preconceptions of their relationship dynamics, and try to guess whether their passing was a deliberate choice, and why.
After a car accident which prevents mobility, Jill takes the opportunity to read Black history and ponders whether there were any cultural or internalized aspects that could be considered 'Black' within herself or the family.
Jill begins to delve into the history of passing in America, looking at so-called 'new people' reinventing themselves during the Nadir of the Black American experience, and the ramifications within the family: alienation from other people, particularly other family.
Jill's discoveries lead to tension with a best friend, and to the challenging reunion over telephone with her oft absent great-aunt, Barbara, surviving child of Anita Hemmings and Dr. Love.
26 Sept 2026
Anita Hemmings at Vassar
Anita Hemmings' great-granddaughter Jill Sim tells the story of Anita's experience at elite women's college Vassar, in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the fallout when it was learned before graduation that Anita had been passing for white the entire time.
16 Sept 2026
Boston Trinity
Jill Sim looks at family connections to Boston Brahmin religious circles, and a segregated church culture during the period of rapid change given by immigration waves to Boston.
Within the complexities of a family’ of color’s tenuous standing in the shifting society, anti-Catholic and Irish sentiments simmer beneath ardent values of equity.
29 Aug 2026
Boston Elites
Jill looks at Boston Brahmins, the White Anglo Saxon Protestant class, and their ordered-up caste structure of the 19th century in the context of the Hemmings family, and their friends, who made up what sociologist Adelaide Cromwell termed: “The Other Brahmins.”
15 Aug 2026
Early Groundwork: Part Two
This episode contains historically racist language that may be offensive for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Jill continues to dig for evidence of her black relatives and immediately encounters the stumbling block for every researcher of African American families in enslavement: black lives were largely unrecorded and unwritten before the 1870 federal census; the first time people emancipated with the Civil War are listed with full names, ages, and places of birth.
There are problems associated with the fallibility of human memory: names passed down through oral traditions by Jill’s grandmother Ellen, for Anita’s mother and grandmother, do not line up with the paper trail.
Jill decides to try and answer the larger question: why did the Hemmings family chose Boston over other American cities with larger African American populations?
Jill’s explorations of the family’s neighborhood in Boston’s Beacon Hill reveal a long and rich history of the presence of free African Americans; a unique community of people associated with the long struggle for freedom and equality.
1 Aug 2026
Early Groundwork
“In genealogy, you start with yourself and work your way backwards…”
In March, 1997, Jill Sim writes an email to Vassar College, which had graduated both her grandmother and great-grandmother. Jill learns from Vassar’s Alumnae Association that her great-grandmother Anita Hemmings is considered the first African American graduate of the school.
This prompts Jill to reach out to the New England Genealogical Historical Society (NEHGS) in Boston to learn something about Anita’s background, and her parents.
18 Jul 2026
Ellen
In Episode Two, we look at the childhoods of Jill Sim's grandmother, Ellen, and her two siblings, Andy and Barbara, raised as solidly white middle class after their parents, Dr. Andrew and Anita Hemmings Love, make the decision to leave Boston and pass as white.
4 Jul 2026
Family Secret
On June 18, 1994, Ellen Love, a former Broadway actress, dies from a fall in her hotel room.
Jill Sim, her granddaughter, and researcher, writer, and host of the Fade to White Podcast, learns that her white grandmother had a black grandfather.
The discovery will lead Jill on a thirty-year personal journey to uncover the full story of her white family’s rich black history.
Music Notes:
Original Music by Al Sim:
"Mystery 3"
"Mystery 1"
"Cold Case Blues"
"March of the War Gods"
"No One I Know" (Instr.)
"Surveillant"
"1970s New York Percussion Break"
Fair Use:
Sample: Tommy Edwards, "It's All in the Game," 1958.
Saint Saens, Le Cygne, from Carnivaux des Animaux, 1886.
Max Bruch, Scottish Fantasy, Op.46, 1880.
Other Incidental Music, Courtesy Pixabay Free to Use Music:
"Sad Background Music" - Sound Gallery by Dimitri Taras
"Blue Ridge Mountain" - Acousticeeg
"Up With the Sun" - Primal House Music
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