Word: thyra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DEATH REVEALED. THYRA JOHNSTON, 91, inadvertent civil rights pioneer; in Honolulu. Fair-skinned, blue-eyed and one-eighth black, Johnston lived as a white woman in Keene, New Hampshire, with her husband Albert, a black physician who also "passed." Their white neighbors were shocked when Dr. Johnston's application for a naval commission in 1940 led him to reveal the couple's racial background. But the small town was ultimately accepting--Dr. Johnston's practice actually increased--and the story became the basis of the 1949 film Lost Boundaries...