Theophilus John McKee

Theophilus John McKee, Born 1880, Died August 4, 1948.

Born Theophilus John Syphax, son of Douglas Syphax and Abbie McKee Syphax, grandson of the African-American property speculator Colonel John McKee, was a light skinned, black man, who decided in 1902, when he was 22 years old, to hide his Negro lineage and live his life as a "white man". He disassociated himself from his family. In June 1904, Theophilus John Syphax legally changed his name to T. John McKee and began living within white society.

In 1905 he applied and was accepted to Columbia University's law school. McKee worked as a commercial attorney on Wall Street for the next 40 years.

He married Anna Lois Dixon, a white woman from upstate New York. They settled in New York City and had two sons - T. John McKee, Jr. in 1910, and Douglas Dixon McKee in 1911. He'd sent his sons to Yale and Trinity College. He successfully hid his black lineage from his wife and children. His marriage to Anna Lois Dixon ended in divorce. McKee remarried another white woman, Aimee Bennett. He hid his background from her also. They lived on Manhattan's East Side. His sons finished college and went to upstate New York near their mother.

For 45 years T. John McKee passed himself off as a white man and lived exclusively within white society. His friends were influential people, lawyers and judges.

His secret was revealed when he came forward to claim an inheritance. In 1946, McKee's first cousin, Dr. Henry McKee Minton, died. That meant McKee was now the last surviving grandchild of the Syphax-McKee dynasty from Philadelphia.

It was reported in a New York Post article on March 25, 1948, that although he had been accepted as a white man for 45 years, he was indeed the Negro grandson of the Negro Civil War veteran Col. John McKee.

He died of heart failure on August 4, 1948.

Theophilus John McKee

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