Anita Thompson Dickinson Reynolds (1901-1980) was an actress, model and bon vivant who traveled in the circles of the affluent and influential in the 1920s and 1930s and later with the white bohemians of New York City.
Reynolds--who was a cousin of Langston Hughes--was the daughter of politically engaged African-American parents and grew up in Los Angeles.
Reynolds' mother enrolled Reynolds in a prestigious all-white dance program when she was young. Reynolds "passed" as the sole "Mexican" pupil.
As an adult, Reynolds capitalized on her racial ambiguity. She worked as an actress and played an Arab servant as well as a transracial adoptee in films. She also worked as a model for Chanel, and was sketched by both Man Ray and Matisse.
Reynolds enjoyed an expatriate life in Paris and Morocco. She hobnobbed with a cast of distinguished characters including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Claude McKay, Paul Bowles, Gertrude Stein, E. E. Cummings, and Picasso.
Reynolds never denied her African-American heritage but seemed to delight in the many racial identities that others assigned her.
Later in life she became a psychologist and worked in the Virgin Islands where she died in 1980. She had no children.
Cornell University Professor George Hutchinson discovered her unpublished memoir which was recently published by Harvard University Press as American Cocktail: A Colored Girl in the World.--Heidi Durrow
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience. Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog! Thanks for reading. And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. Copyright 2014.
