Great Migration

The Great Migration is a historical frame for Passing rather than a single event narrated in the novel. In its aftermath, the novel’s movement between Chicago and New York City places questions of racial identity and social possibility within changing urban settings. The city offers mobility and anonymity, but does not erase the racial and gendered boundaries that shape the characters’ lives.

Historical and Temporal Setting

Passing’s opening encounter is set in Chicago, while its main action and ending take place in New York City. The novel thus links two urban locations across a period of social transition following the Great Migration. Its 1927 setting places the characters’ experiences within a changing city culture, without making migration itself the focus of a narrated episode.

Urban Mobility and Anonymity

The cities in the novel are more than backdrops: they make movement between social settings possible. Urban diversity and anonymity can allow people to present themselves in different ways, giving racial passing room to operate. That possibility depends on mobility through public life, but it is never secure; the same social world that permits movement also creates occasions for scrutiny and exposure.

The Color Line in a Changing City

The novel’s urban openness does not mean that racial divisions have disappeared. Its passing plot engages a history in which law and custom attached social privilege and material advantages to whiteness, while racial classifications sustained exclusion. The contrast is central: identities may be difficult to read from appearance, yet the color line continues to organize social belonging and access to rights.

Significance in the Novel

The Great Migration’s aftermath helps situate Passing’s tension between transformation and constraint. Chicago and New York City represent spaces of movement and social change, while the characters’ experiences show that geographic mobility does not by itself undo racial hierarchy or gender restrictions. The historical frame therefore sharpens the novel’s account of passing: city life may make reinvention possible, but the boundaries being crossed remain consequential.