It is 1905, and Belle da Costa Greene (born Belle Marion Greener) works as a librarian at Princeton University. She feels constant pressure to be ladylike enough to escape anyone noticing that she is a Black woman passing as white at the elite, segregated university. Junius Morgan, nephew of steel baron J.P. Morgan, informs her that he has recommended her for a position as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian. Her life is about to change.

On the way home to the Greeners’ crowded apartment, Belle reminisces about her extended family in Washington, D.C., where Grandma Fleet presided over them all and where Richard Greener, Belle’s father and a respected civil rights advocate, doted on her. Belle was 17 when Richard discovered that Genevieve listed the family as white to secure their Central Park apartment. Genevieve argued that increasingly discriminatory laws meant passing was the only path forward for their children. Richard saw passing as a betrayal of their race and his own political work, and he left the family that night. Genevieve created a white persona—Belle da Costa Greene, an olive-complexioned white woman with a Portuguese grandmother—to allow Belle to pass as white after the separation.