Pinky Film Analysis

Released in 1949, Pinky regales the tale of Patricia “Pinky” Johnson (played by Jeanne Crain) and her struggles in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era. Pinky, a certified nurse from up North, relocates back to Mississippi because she is afraid of being discovered passing, or having black blood but being so light skinned that one can pass for white. However, she is in love with Dr. Thomas Adams, played by William Lundigan, a white man whom she met while she was living in Boston for nursing school. Upon her return to Mississippi, her illiterate grandmother Aunt Dicey takes care of her, but eventually asks her to take care of her dying, white friend, Miss Em. Despite her efforts to go back to the North in order to escape from the racial barriers of Mississippi, Pinky reluctantly agrees to

We first see this towards the beginning of the film where Pinky gets into the altercation with Jake and Rozelia. Because the cops could tell from a distance that Jake and Rozelia were black, they immediately assumed that they were in the wrong. It was only while the cops were arresting them that they discovered that Pinky, too, was “black” and that she must also be in the wrong so they arrested her as well. This also explains why the cops slapped Rozelia when she brought up the fact that Pinky was also “black” because it was unheard of for a black woman to say such a thing about a white woman. A second example of phenotype racism comes when Judge Walker is talking to Pinky, Rozelia, and Jake in his office. He acts under racial pretenses against Jake as he warns him to “keep his hands off of other people’s money.” This displays Judge Walker’s lack of trust towards Jake dealing with other people’s money, primarily because he is black, and assumes that he will probably jip his “customers” again. Pinky does a very good job at highlighting the differences in phenotype racism and racism based on