March 4, 2025 • 58 mins
On this episode of The Professional Homegirl Podcast, Eboné’s guest shares the shocking discovery that redefined her identity and family history. After uncovering her mother’s hidden Black ancestry, she was forced to confront the complexities of race, identity, belonging, and the weight of long-buried family secrets. Eboné and her guest dive into her mother’s decision to pass as white, the emotional toll of living with that secret, and how this revelation shattered everything she thought she knew about her past.
They explore the impact of discovering hidden ancestry on personal identity, the difficult conversations around race and family history, and what it truly means to embrace one’s full identity. Tune in for a powerful conversation on racial identity, self-discovery, and the courage to uncover family secrets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome one and all to the Professional Homegirl Podcast. Before
we begin today's episode, we want to remind you that
the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those
of the host and guests and are intended for educational
and entertaining purposes. In this safe space, no question is
off limits because you never know how someone's storyline can
be your lifeline. The Professional Homegirl Podcast is here to
(00:22):
celebrate the diverse voices, stories and experiences of women of color,
providing a platform for authentic and empowering conversations. There will
be some key king, some tears, but most importantly a
reminder that tough times don't last, but professional homegirls do
enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
On this week's episode of the Professional Homegirl Podcast, we
dive into the incredible story of a woman who uncover
a life alter and family secret. Now she always believed
she knew her mother until a shock and discovery revealed
that her mother had been passing as white, leaving behind
her black identity. In this powerful conversation, she shares her
(01:12):
emotional journey on unraveling the truth, confronting her mother's past,
and redefining her own sense of self. Tune in as
we explore race, family and the wait of hidden histories,
and my mom lived her life passing as a white woman.
Starting now, all right, to my guests, thank you so
(01:32):
much for being on a show. How you doing, how
you feeling?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I am doing really well. Good. Thanks for having me
on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of course, I was just telling her you all before
we started the episode that I really enjoyed your book.
I just really enjoyed your story, very inspiring.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah. Now, before we dive into your personal journey, I
want to talk about your background as a mystery writer.
So you spent many years crafting intricate plots and solving
fictional puzzles, but in many ways, you ended up uncovering
the biggest mystery of your life. So did you feel
as if your skills is a mystery writer help you
navigate the shock and discovery about your mother's racial identity?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yes? And no. Well, actually, the initial discovery was a
shock that I was not prepared for, yeah at all.
But as I started my own research and started putting
pieces together, that's when more than mystery writer skills came
(02:36):
into play. And you know, it's funny you asked that question, because,
as you know, I was on Genealgie Road Show, and
that show used to beyond PBS, and you have to
fill out a form to be on. So I started
out my form was saying, I'm a mystery author who
(02:58):
has a mystery in her own family she can't solve
with any certainty. And they love that.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
They thought, oh, okay, is this the biggest story that
you uncovered as far as a mystery writer your own?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yes, short of anyone getting murdered. Right, No one got
murdered when I was uncovering.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
This, right now, did you know about racial passing and
insignificance in America before you knew about your mother's story?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I did. I don't know what year this was. Imitation
of Life. Do you remember that movie that was a
big deal? I think it was.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
It wasn't in black and white, I no, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It was in color. The second one. The first one was,
you're right, I'm thinking of the one I saw as
a young person, and so that made me very aware
of that of passing. And but you know, I was
being aware of it, and then find out your mother
is passing.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, you know. I was so excited about your conversation,
and I was speaking to my best friend about it,
and she told me how her great grandmother passed and
she learned about it, and I was like, oh, wow,
Like it's like I feel like now racial pass is
like starting to come to the forefront of a lot
of conversation when it comes to race.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I think you're right. However, when my mother was passing, no,
you never reveal that you know family members, never to
reveal another family member is passing. That's sort of an
unwritten rule, right because it could be dangerous. My mom
was born in New Orleans in nineteen twenty one, so
(04:35):
we still had segregation and a lot of violence toward
people of color. I'm just lynchings things like that. So
back then, in my mother's era, you didn't talk about that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Do you think passing still happens in different forms today?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I do. I don't have any evidence of that, but
I would guess it does. Yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So, looking back, do you think your mother would have
understood why you chose to share her story?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You know, I'm not sure. There's a part of me
that thinks, yes, she totally would want this, because she
always wanted me to speak up about injustice of any kind,
and she would you know she could say something, so
I think, in one hand, yes, she would have. But
(05:30):
then when I did confront her in nineteen ninety seven
with all my evidence that she was passing, she swore
me to secrecy. She you know I had. It was
after my father's death, so I had visit her. I
asked her to visit me in Illinois. I grew up
(05:50):
in Ohio. So when I told her, Mom, I have
your birth certificate, because I did right to the State
of Louisiana for my mother's birth certificate. I pretended I
was my mother and I lost my birth certificate, and
so of course they sent it to me. And on
her birth certificate in parentheses are three letters col me
(06:15):
is colored, right, So just to be sure, because I'm
a researcher, I sent another letter to the State of
Louisiana and said, would you explain what col means to
the state, And they sent me a really long letter
and they said, in most instances, col means a person
of color, and many times a person of African descent.
(06:37):
So I had my evidence, and when I said to
my mom, I have the birth certificate, she she got
very angry. She said, I don't know a birth certificate
you have, but mine says I'm white. So I took
a beat and I because I could see she was upset,
and then I said, well, mom, I've got your birth certificate.
(07:00):
I have some other documentation I like to show you,
and it does not say you're white. So she got
very very quiet, like she kind of shrunk into herself.
And then she looked at me and she said, you
can never tell anyone until after I die, because how
will I hold my head up with my friends. Yeah,
(07:23):
that's how much fear and shame she was caring. And
then I said I only had one sibling, my brother's
recently died.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
But I said, can I do?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Is very sad. I said, well, can I tell my brother?
And she said no, not even him. I did not
feel good about keeping this secret. What I thought in
my mind, though, was it's not my secret, it's hers.
So I'm going to honor what she wants. And she
(07:54):
lived a long time. She lived in ninety two, So
I kept your secret for seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That's a long time to keep a secret. Ninety two years.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yes, and then the only people I told, of course,
I felt I had to tell my husband and my
two children. And then I had a very good friend
that I shared it with, but that was it. I
didn't tell any God.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Bless your mother, because I've been reading a lot about
like racial pasts and stuff, and I think you wrote
in your book you was like a lot of times
people racial pass for just security and for a better life,
and I can only imagine how painful that was for
her to leave her community and just her family behind.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was in some ways, but in other ways. I
don't think as much for maybe someone who was very
tight with their family. My mother came from a very
chaotic family. She was not raised by either parent, so
she was sort of shuffled around to grandmas and so
(08:49):
I think that might have made it easier for her. Yeah,
But I don't know, because every time I tried to
talk to her, oh god, yeah, yeah, she would say
to me what I would bring a she go, so
how are the kids?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Okay, I know she's not going.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
To tell me so right. Well, And of course her
daughter discover her.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Truth, yeah, absolutely. And not only did I discover it,
I decided to write.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
About it, I know, and go on National TV.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
On National TV, and as you would say, I outed
my mother. Yeah, on national TV, which you know, I
struggle with that a little bit, but till then. No,
when I initially decided to go on television, but then
I justified it by thinking, well, she said until I die.
(09:43):
So she was deceased. She died in twenty fourteen, and
that opportunity to be on PBS's genealogy road show was
game three months after her death. That's how close it was.
So I thought, okay, well I kept the vow. I
(10:04):
did it, so now it's time. Yeah. And I also
thought this would help other people.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know, no, I think so. I believe so too.
So how did this affect you personally? Because I know
in the book you mentioned how you had questions about
your own identity.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Absolutely, it took me a long long time to figure
out my identity. And you know, over since the book
came out and I've been on the Today Show, I
get Initially, I got a lot of email through my website,
and most of it was positive. I'm not going to
(10:39):
but there were always people who question my motives, who
thought I was after something that I wasn't so, and
then then every time I did a presentation or I
was on television or the radio, I could count on
one question. Now that you know your heritage, how do
you racially identify? Right? Everyone wanted to know that. So
(11:02):
in the beginning, I thought the best way to identify too,
because I hadn't suffered at racism, Look at me as
white as can be. Yeah, so you know, I'm not
going to get up there and claim something that I
have no right to claim. So I said, well, I'm
a white woman with black heritage. And when I gave
(11:23):
a talk in Saint Louis, there was a black woman
in the audience who actually asked me that. And when
I gave that answer, she said, well, there's no other
answer you can give. I'm the president of the Black
Caucus here in Saint Louis. That's the right answer. So
I thought, Okay. Then when I was on the Today Show,
you know, Megan Kelly was the host, she asked me
(11:45):
the same question. I gave the same answer. About two
weeks later on Amazon and this woman identifies herself as black,
just squres me in her comment. She hasn't read the
book though she took me on the show. She said,
I'm telling all black people not to read this book.
(12:06):
You are not to read this book. This woman has
not properly honored her black heritage.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Why did she say that?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I wish I knew. I wish I knew, So, you know,
I started thinking about it. That was really the start
of my journey to redefine my racial identity because I
and it also was like a revelation to me that
no matter how I was going to identify, I was
going to make somebody unhappy, and it had less to
(12:39):
do with me and more to do with their agenda.
So it took me a while. I kept identifying as
white with black heritage, and then finally, I know, some
years later, I don't know how many years later, I
kind of put the pieces together rethought it. I was
on this podcast called My American Melting Pot, and the
(13:02):
host was a black woman. She said to me, you
understand that every time you talk, you're sort of an
ambassador to white people explain to them blackness. And I thought, well,
that's not my intention. I'm a storyteller. But then they
got me thinking and I thought, okay, well, yeah, I'm
(13:25):
out there, I'm saying these things. I'm trying to just
tell my mother's story. So everyone's aware of how racial
designations in this country hold people back, how they hold
them back, and how you know, my family, my mother's family,
you know, in nineteen hundreds senses they're black, and then
(13:47):
in nineteen thirty senses my grandfather, Asima Frederick, is white.
It's crazy, h That's just crazy. So at that point
I decided, well, think about what makes up your racial identity.
So I have DNA, which seven and nine percent African heritage.
(14:08):
Then I have my ancestry, my ancestors, what they endured.
Because I traced the family, the Fredericks, all the way
back to seventeen hundreds colonial Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You did a lot of research, Miss Gail.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh. I had help. I'm not going to take all
the credit.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But you, your husband, everybody.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Everybody helped me. And I found Marda an enslaved woman,
and I saw what she endured. Though she was emancipated
by her enslaver, but she bore him seventeen and that
seventeen seven thirteen children. Oh yeah, during the first four
she was enslaved and the rest she freed her and
(14:48):
the children. So anyway, I and then I, you know,
you just trace the history of the family through all
these racial designations and how they were held back, and
and then I thought, you know, I need to claim this.
I need to claim this in a bigger way than
what I was claiming it. So when the twenty twenty
(15:10):
census came out, you know, we all had opportunities to
declare what we thought we were. So I ended up
saying I was mixed race. And now when I give
a talk, that's what I say, and if people have
a problem with it, I invite them to talk to
me about it so that we can have a dialogue.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
We need to start cursing people out. That's what you
need to do, because if I'm being honest with you, miss,
you are their first white presenting woman I ever had
on my show, right because my platform is built Yeah,
my platform is built for women of color. But when
I read your story, I did my research on you,
(15:54):
and I also, you know, I for some reason, I
just had a really soft spot for your mom, and
I feel like when I read your story, you were
very honest about the history of race in America, and
also you were very honest about how you the experience
you was navigating through, and the feelings you was going through.
So I think it was kind of annoying how people
would questioning you because I don't think you I don't
(16:14):
feel like you had any ill intent at all. I
think you were just discovering something that you never knew
even existed, and it was a big discovery.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It was huge to me, though, I have to tell
you again, you know, I'm under public scrutiny. So sometimes
they would get emails or indirect things posted. Well, you know,
why is it that white people when they find they
have black ancestries are so surprised? What's the big deal? Right?
But that's not why I did it. But it has
(16:45):
nothing to do with that. I wanted to show what
my mother suffered, what my family suffered, what racism in
America looks like from the beginning, but only, of course,
only in Louisiana because that's where my family lived. So
but that's a good example. And you know, I have
(17:06):
a Civil War hero, Leon Frederick, who was a person
of color and he was part of the first Colored
Troops Native Guards in Louisiana. He was with the Union.
I was so proud of him. I wanted that out there.
I wanted people to start doing kind of a mind
shift about things. But I would love to curse people
(17:29):
out However, what this then we're in an argument. Seriously,
I really would.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, because I'm I'm me questioning when I am, like
my mother's back, like, I'm ALTI racial? What do you
think I am?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah? Well, because of the way I look. I think
that's part of the problem, right people. Even recently, I
had someone I don't know how they got to me
on Facebook, I don't know. I think it was a woman,
and she said she was explaining to me that I
should not be ashamed of my white heritage. Shake my white.
(18:12):
It's like, because I was saying I was mixed, that
meant I was ashamed of being white. No, right, that's
not it, right, I don't know. I think I unfriended her.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, So how do you think the one drop rule
continues to shape conversations around race and identity today?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Well, you know, supposedly we don't anymore in the South
to define race, right, you know when my mother was
growing up, Yes, the one drop role, if you had
one drop of African blood, you are considered black. So
that does not that is not a legal thing anymore.
(18:57):
So I don't know how much it affects us today.
I still think we're making decisions very much on appearance.
We are looking at people and still doing that and
then having a set of stereotypes in our brain based
on people's appearances.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So looking back, were there are moments in your childhood
where you now realize your mother was protecting her secret?
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yes? I yes, And that did not come to me
until I wrote White Like Her started putting the pieces together,
and I had this very vivid memory as I was
a young girl, my mother she came, I sat on
her bed in her bedroom, and she started telling me
tales of New Orleans, and the one that really stuck
(19:48):
out in my mind. She told the tale. It was
a true story, not a tale, of witnessing a black
woman coming down the banquette the sidewalk into Oran and
she was burdened with all these groceries. She was an
older woman, and a white man is approaching her and
she's struggling, and because she didn't get off the sidewalk
(20:11):
for him, he pushed her off the sidewalk and all
her grocery fell and all her And my mother said
to me, you never treat people that way. That's the
wrong way to treat people. She was giving me a
secret message that took me a long time to cope, right.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, I feel like she was break from here and there.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Oh, absolutely yeah. And of course she had all these
quirks that I just thought she was just I had
a quirky mom. You know, we all think, don't we
all think her mom's a little anyway, right, I'm sure my.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Daughter thinks, I know.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Anyway, I just thought, well, you know, mom, never go
out in the sun without a hat. She liked she would.
She would never, you know, she never Sunday, that's for sure.
And then she had this other weird habit. She would
wear make up a light foundation on her face before
she went at night. And I didn't think any of
it when I was really young, but when I got
(21:12):
to be a teenager, I thought, why is she wearing
making I don't wear. Yeah, so I questioned her, and
then she has this weird explanation about you never know
when you're going to get sick in the middle of
the night. Then the ambulance comes for you, and you
want to look your best because you'll get better treatment
at the hospital. So I thought, I don't know about that,
(21:35):
but that's what she said.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I was when you was talking about her doing
a makeup and even a heat even with she I
think she waited a certain amount of time to give
birth to your brother because she had fears of maybe
the child coming out darker.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Well, I don't know. I mean when I asked her
why there was a five year gap, my mom was
very religious, so I have to kind of accept this.
She said, well, that's what God intended, you know, very religious.
But I also think she must have been thinking that.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, I would have been thinking that, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Because that's her background. And when I spoke with her
first cousin, who was of her generation, the only one surviving,
her name was you would call her cousin, you got it,
And she explained that to me. She says, oh, yeah,
we always waited to see the complexion of the baby,
(22:40):
so I'm sure that was in my mom's mind. My
mom had sort of an olive complexion. She always claims
that people thought she was Italian, that kind of thing,
so that was always on her mind.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Right. So, in today's climb, and how do you think
your mother's life would have been different if she openly
identify as black, Well.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I would hope it would be a lot better because
there are more opportunities you know, I'm not going to
say we're there yet, and we're not there yet racially
in this country, for sure, but we've made some strides forward,
and I think she might might if she had been
(23:24):
of my generation, she might have been able to embrace it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, And do you believe she carry like guilt?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yes, I do. I think she did. There were only
certain family members that were allowed to visit us. I
didn't know this at the time, as I referred to
in the book and quote passable people who could pass
for white. So my father wouldn't know. And after the
(23:55):
book came out, Uncle Homer, who was my mother's full brother,
his daughter I never met him. His daughter, Phoebe, actually
called me to talk to me. And Uncle Homer married
a woman of colors, so the children were so. Phoebe said, oh,
when your mother and father and brother came to visit
(24:16):
us in New Orleans, if I was already married, I
could not be at the house. And I said, what
do you mean. She said, well, I couldn't be a
Grandma Camille's house because I was too dark. She told
me not to come. M I felt terrible, and she
seemed to like accept it, like, well, that's why it
was and we didn't want your father to know.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
You think your dad knudough or had an idea.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I guess cousin you were that And she said he
didn't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I'll never know, because I feel like when you was
describing the argument they had and he was like, before
I met you, you didn't have any shoes. In a way,
he was talking about black people, and I feel like
your mom was like she was trying to like, you know,
not it obvious, but like, you can't treat people like that.
I don't know. I feel like he had maybe had
an idea, or maybe he just felt like something was off.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
He might have thought something was off. But then you know,
they met during the war, so he was in Mississippi.
He went to New Orleans on R and R. That's
where they met, so he was probably familiar with how
people in New Orleans little creoles and all of that.
I'm sure my mother's I can't prove this, but I'm
sure somehow she got her hands on a white birth certificate.
(25:28):
She had to how I mean, how else could she
have gotten married in Ohio without a birth certificate?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So somehow she maneuvered this and you know, my mom
was a very beautiful woman, and I'm sure my father thought,
holy cow, I'm so lucky. I'm not going to question
too much right now, right, No, she was really pretty, Yeah,
she was pretty gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, so you decide to share your story on national
TV to sharing your family story, how did the reactions
of your friends and your families respond to it? Because
your father was also he was a racist?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, you know, I guess you could say that. And
I'm not making excuses.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right, so I get it.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, he's my dad, and he grew up you know,
at a certain time. He's born nineteen eighteen. He grew
up in a very ethnic neighborhood. You know, there's a
lot of immigrants, so there it was not it's not right,
but there was a lot of bigotry and racism. So
(26:36):
he was continuing that though I never ever ever heard
him say the end word, right, So I don't know
if and this is going to sound so patronizing, so
forgive me, but one of his best friends at work
was a black man. Argacy that right, that he loved him.
They were friends. So how do you get that in
(26:59):
your how do you you know what I mean? Figure
that out. So, yeah, I think he was a bigger.
He was a racist, sure, and I'm not going to
say he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, how did his family feel about you sharing a
story like was somebody like I shared?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
His generation were already dead right now, I'm dealing with
my cousins. And I went back home after the book came,
I was invited to a talk the library, and some
of my cousins came. They were great, They said, we
had no idea, but this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know, generation is different than the old generation.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
They're different. I had no backlash from any of my
family or my friends. I had one friend say to me,
you know, I'm kind of upset with you. You kept that
secret from me, and I'm your friend. You never told me.
So everyone was good about it. I had no problems
with anybody.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah. Were you concerned about how the black community or
the white community would perceive your mother's decision to pass?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I did a talk at a bookstore in Hyde Park
in Illinois, Chotta. Yeah, And it was a mixed audience.
And there was a point where and I was in
conversation with a professor from U S where I did
my graduate work, and she's a black woman. And so
there's a point where suddenly, and I don't know why
(28:24):
this happened, the audience shifted and started criticizing my mother.
I don't see why she thought she had to leave.
That was the community. She should have staying in her
community and gotten support. I was sort of taken aback,
so I didn't say anything right away, and then the
(28:44):
professor came in and said, look, guys, you're blaming the
victim here, right, Let's not do that. So she kind
of shut it down. But yeah, I mean I don't
know that. Yeah, I've received that. I've seen that you.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Have to like do you travel with somebody or like
do you have a routine, because I can only imagine
what you have to do to get your mind ready
for these conversations, because you don't know how it can go.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I never know, right well, you know, I had many
years of teaching on a university level, so anytime you
walk into it from day to day, it's like I
never know. So yeah, yeah, I don't always travel with someone.
Sometimes they go alone, but usually you know, if it's
(29:29):
the library that's brought me in, they'll have someone pick
me up and take me there and back. So I
have a very strange experience. You're probably thinking of that
from the book early on. This is actually before the
book came out, but after I was on the road show,
I gave a talk at a genealogy society which is
about an hour from my houses. And the audience was
(29:52):
all white except for this one woman who was of
Asian descent. So in the middle of my talk and
there was obviously something wrong with her because she I
was getting towards the end. I was about done, and
she gets up and she said, and it comes up
to the you know where I'm staying singing right, she
starts singing. She starts, and I could see the person
(30:15):
who's posting going home. Oh we got it, so yeah,
I hit the things on my feet. I didn't know
what song she was singing. I just kind of let
her sing and then I quick and then plowted and said,
well that's great. Now I like to Is it okay
if I finish? She did. She went and sat down.
But then as I'm leaving, it's a really dark parking
(30:39):
lot and I'm leaving a little bit before everyone else.
She follows me do the parking lot and I'm pulling
my little suitcase with all my books. It's like, I'm
a little hobbled and I'm trying to get to my
car and she just keeps talking blah blah blah, and
she's saying these kind of weird things, and I'm not
sure what to do. So again I had to think quickly,
(31:00):
and I said, you know, I came in this parking,
but I'm not sure how to get out of it.
Can you show me how? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So
they got her brain out of whatever she was thinking,
and she gave me directions and then I got in
my clock and I was so shook up. I actually
went the wrong way.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, because like, girl, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
It's like, no, I knew that something was off there,
and you don't you want to be very nice and
kind and get her fight box.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, something was clearly wrong with her though.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, No, it had nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, you know what, I'm curious, what do you think
about white women who get the braids they want to
be black, they tanny skin, they say they black, they
act like black people, Like, what are your thoughts on that?
Because I can't think of the lady's name, But remember
that one.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Who?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Oh, I know, yeah, Rachel, my girl, Rachel.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, yeah, you know. I have her in the second book.
What they never told us because I tell a story
in there of a woman for her last name is
virtil vera.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Bird a bird, Yes I know what it is, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, and older lady bird a bird, and that's her name. Anyway.
The only reason she came out with her story we
was because of Rachel Dulcany. She was furious with this
woman doing that.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Rachel was trying to though, Miss gil Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Mean, come on, come on, I just to me, it's wrong.
I'm all for people embracing things, but not the way,
not what she did that. That's that's co opting someone
else's heritage, their identity. It's co opting something you have
no right to. If you want to talk about race
(32:55):
in America and you know what's happened, you don't do
it that way, right, you know, there are other ways
you can do it. You can do it the way
I'm doing it, right, You don't have to do that. Yeah, No,
I'm not. I'm not not a fan. Okay, let's that way.
I'm not a fan of that. And you know when
(33:15):
people accuse me. Oh, the only reason you are telling
your stories you want reparations? Hell no, right, no, right, yeah,
good for that?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
No, right, because girls.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Can you see me showing up for reparations. I don't
think that's gonna work anyway, right, not gonna happen, And
that would be wrong, even though I have ancestors who
would be entitled, you know, but no, that's not that's
(33:50):
not what I do. So yeah, no, I'm not in
favor of that.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
What was the most surprising thing you discovered while researching
your family history beyond your mother's secret.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh that's a hard one. Yeah, that's I got to
think for a minute. Well, I wasn't surprise learning about Marta.
My goal when I sat down. I had several goals
when I sat down to write White like Her, because
in the beginning, some people were talking about, oh, you
should do a fiction book because you're a fiction writer,
(34:21):
and then others were saying, no, do nonfiction, and then
I decided nonfiction was better. So once I got back
to Marta, Marta by the Ways and other books, other
research books, which I was shocked because not only was
she enslaved, okay, so her mother was enslaved, I'm pretty
(34:43):
sure her mother was brought from Africa. It is either
her mother. It's hard because there's no there are no records,
so we have to kind of make leaps and do
it logically. She was part of this estate in Louisiana, huge.
These people were very wealthy, and she of course was
(35:03):
inherited as part of the property. I hate to see
these things, but it's true, this is what happened. I'm
not going to sugarcoat this. So as I said, she
had and I would talk about this in the book
because you cannot look at this as she had free will.
She had no free will, and that sometimes in my research,
(35:27):
as usually I hate to say this a male who's suggesting, well,
these women had free will. No, No, she's yeah. And
when I read her papers the reasons given for her freedom,
I got furious. Yeah, I was so angry. There's no
free will. So after she had the fourth child, as
(35:47):
I said, he freed her, and the fourth children went
on to have a total of thirteen. This is what
surprised me when in his will when he died, he
divided his estate, which is very usual, and you're talking
about seventeen hundreds. Half went tomato and half the children.
So they were free people of color who now are
(36:08):
in the middle class because they have an estate, they
have some wealth, which is very unusual, right, very unusual.
So I mean, you can look at it however you
want to look at it. But that did surprise me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
You know one thing that surprised me about your story
when you was on your research, how you discovered that
a lot of birth records had errors and yes, yeah,
and it made me think about my birth certificate because
I was trying to get my Social Security card like
many years ago, and I was telling the lady that
my birthday was February the eighth, and she was like, no,
(36:46):
that's not your birthday. And I'm like, girl, how are
you gonna tell me? And come to find out, somebody
put February third for my birthday. Yeah, you're kidding.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
So when nobody caught it, nobody caught that it was wrong.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Right, So when I was reading your story, I was like,
my goodness, Like, I can only imagine how many families
are dealing with those errors that happened many years ago
or centuries ago.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, centuries ago. You know that. Really, I know, we're
talking about white like her. But that really comes into
play in that my latest book, What They Never Told Us,
Because these are all true stories of people who find
out that either one or both of their parents aren't
their parents, which means there's something wrong with their birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And in one case, this one man, Brad Yule, who
he's just retired, he's a Texas cop. He takes a
DNA test him and his wife for fun.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Let's have fun, right, I wish I had some fun
like that. Take a dn DNA.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Has some fun, right, So, and then they post results
on Amazon and not Amazon on ancestry. So anyway, two
years later, he gets this strange message from a woman
claiming to be his maternal aunt. He doesn't know who
she is. Theyn't know who she is. So the first
thing he does, because he's a copy, wants to help
(38:08):
her so she can find the real nephew. He pulls
out his firsth certificate and his wife's because they were
born in Dallas the same year in nineteen seventy, compares them.
They couldn't have been more different. Where hers has a
hospital where she was born, has a cash where her
father signed their certificate. His father's name is typed in
(38:32):
long story short, he finds out he was adopted at
forty eight. He finds Ai didn't know, and it gets
even better. Not only is he adopted, but he goes
in search of who his biological parents are. Moms decease.
His dad is still alive, but he's serving a life
(38:53):
sentence in Angola prison for murder.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
What.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yes, this is the most beenantastic story you'll ever here.
Everyone wants to read it by what they never told us. Yes,
what he does afterwards truly inspirational and amazing.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Wow, could you imagine your daddy in jail?
Speaker 3 (39:15):
No, no, nope, nope. People who read the book who
don't have these surprises started they told me the star
never searched this because and counting back was like, wait a.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Minute, do I ever see You're gonna wait? Nobody had
any intentions of telling him.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
No, he actually called. The first thing he did when
he figured it out was he called his adopted dad
and he said he on. They were on the phone
and he liked hemmed and hawed, and then finally he
admitted it, and his dad said to him, well, we've
been trying to find a way to tell you that. Yeah,
you've been.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Trying for forty eight years, right.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
To tell me, He goes, that was the next lie, right.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Right, Come on, one thing I like about you. I
feel like you are just so fun and you're very honest.
So what conversations about privileged race and systemic inequality they're
writing this book force you to tell yourself?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Okay? You know I'm an educator, right, so I'm very
aware of and I'm a historian. I'm very interested in history.
So I've been aware of systemic racism through history, through time.
So what changed for me? And I hope I'm answering
your question. It's not that I didn't know. I did know,
(40:39):
But when you find out, oh, it's not something in
a history book, like slavery is not something in a
history book. Slavery is something my ancestors had to deal
with that was interested on them. It changes everything because
it's well, that's that's my tribe. Yeah, you're messing with
(41:02):
my people. It really so it becomes visceral, like physical
for me. That's when I said to you, when I
saw what the enslaver wrote why he freed Marta, is like,
you got a heck of a lot of nerves saying
in regards to her affection toward you. What choice did she? Yeah,
(41:24):
give me a break? Yeah, I get really worked up
about that. It really bothers me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, I feel like when people read your book, and
I also feel like for yourself, like you found a
new understanding of sacrifices and struggles that our generation has
had to endure.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Yes. Absolutely, you know, like I was saying, my mom
had these quirky habits, and after I did my research,
and you know, she would not talk about passing. So
I do a lot of research to understand what that
was in terms of what you gave up, what were
the pluses and and what that did to a person.
(42:02):
And I really had a deeper understanding for her. But
I also have a real sadness for our relationship because
I felt like, you know, she saw I was keeping
the secrets. Yeah, and I tried to talk to her
about it. If she would only have talked to me, Yeah,
how deeper our relationship would have been. I wasn't going
(42:25):
to tell anybody. She had to trust me. But I
think it was so ingrained in her that she was
in such a state of denial that she just couldn't
talk about it. Yeah, you know, it just wasn't. And
the same goes for my dad. You know, we talked
about his racism, and you know, he served in World
War Two and he was in for the duration in
(42:47):
the South Pacific. Until I got his records from the
hospital when he had the medical issues, I had no
understanding what this man went through.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, you spoke about mental health.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Yes, yeah, and he was never the same and he
actually told the psychiatrists, I am not the same man
anymore and I'll never be. So I had more empathy
for him because it's hard growing up in an alcoholic households.
It's really for children of ahol alcoholics. It's a tough road. Yeah,
(43:21):
And so I had more understanding from what he went through.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
You know, while he was talking, I can just only
imagine that desire to have that relationship with your mother
the way that it possibly could have been, because if
she would have just been honest with you, I can
only imagine other things that you will probably unlocked.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
You know, And you know how I give myself consolation.
Had she shared it all right, I probably wouldn't have
been on the road show, and I probably not have
ridden because I would have had my answer my question
answered ready.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Part of the journey of the book is answering those
questions and tracing the family and figuring out how this
all began.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah. If your mother could see the impact of y'all
story today, what do you think she will say.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I want to believe that she would be proud of me.
Though she never ever said she was proud of me.
I would like to think she would have been proud
and she would have seen how much good has come
out of it.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah. Yeah, which one of the reasons why you wrote
your second book, because so many people were emailing you,
reaching out to you, telling you their family secrets.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Well, I was shocked because these were intimate things. Hey guys,
I'm a stranger, but I don't know. It must have
touched people in a way that they felt they could
trust me, and they were right, you can trust me. Yeah.
So that's why the people in the book there are
fourteen stories, but they trusted me.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And when I you know, I did all my interviews
on zoom, so they would say to me at the beginning,
I feel like I kind of know you already that
I can tell you, And so it cut through a
lot of you know, them being cleary of me, and
because I already told my story, so they felt they
could tell theirs.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yes, people feel seen.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Yeah they did, and everything in there is what they
told me.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So what advice would you give to someone today who
feels torn between two racial identities.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
I think that's very tough. Yeah, and I keep bringing
the book up. What they never told was one of
the stories of Bruce Paul Scott finds out he always
suspected something was up, but he finds out later in
life that his biological father was black. He's much older.
It affected him deeply in many ways, having people constantly
(45:51):
use racial slurs around him because of his appearance. That
we grew up in this very white Irish Catholic family
who kept telling you it's the recessive gene, which was
a lie. Right, So he said, to this day, I
accept I'm biracial. That's fine. I'm good with that, but
I'm still uncomfortable because I don't know what that actually means. Yeah,
(46:14):
because he doesn't have the cultural background of you know,
of his black heritage. She just has white.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, that's all he knows.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
That's how does he mesh those things together? So I
think that's hard and I wish I had an answer. Yeah,
I can only look at examples of people I've talked to.
Does that help?
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, no, it does.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I think it's very difficult when you look a certain
way but you identify another way, and you've been identifying
this way for many, many years, Like I couldn't even
imagine being black my entire life, and then come to
find out I'm white, Like, that's that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
I think there was someone at the end of white
like her who wrote me. I think her name was Paris.
I know if you remember her about No she's the
one who can pass. But she said, the white community
does not accept her black. So she's kind of like
in this limbo place with her race. Yes she doesn't.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about when I was
reading your book, when you first met your cousins and yeah,
had the family reunion, Like how was that for you?
Just seeing all these different types of people.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Awesome? It was, oh my god, it was They welcomed
me with open arms. You know, it was a reunion
to bring me back into the family, which, yeah, family
I didn't even know existed some of them, and that
they had a dinner in New Orleans and I sat
with uncle Fred, aunt Alma and Brenda, my husband and me,
(47:47):
and you know, my mom had only been dead a year,
so look, I kept staring at them. Yeah, and I
finally apologized because I was I'm missing my mom and
they looked so much much like her. It was like
she was there with us, you know. Yeah. It was
very emotional for me.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yes, yeah, you know what you look like. You can
cook me is but I can only imagine the food
you've been getting from your cousins and theli I had
the family reunion.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Oh yeah, you know, and my mom would cook New
Orleans stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Oh so I know she could cook.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, oh yeah, we had you know, red beans and
rice with shrimp on Fridays. I think I sa in
the book I make a joke I'm the only girl
from the Cleveland area who grew up on grits, right,
it's like which I have. My Polish husband cooks too. Now,
we have that all the time.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
I love me some grits.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
You come over, We'll have some grits.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yes, yes, I'm definitely gonna pull up on you for sure.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
All right.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
And last, when not least, looking back, how has uncovering
your mother's secret changed the way you see yourself.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Well, yeah, I don't see myself any or it is
just this white woman. I see myself as a mixed
race woman who has this rich, wonderful heritage that you know,
I'm proud of and I want people to know about it. Yeah,
that's why I'm talking about it. I you know, I'm
not hiding under you know, some shelf and some closet.
(49:17):
This is out there, It's been out there.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'm super excited we had this conversation.
This was definitely a treat for sure for me too.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and I'm very honored that I'm the only white person,
but I really am not totally.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Technically you're not white by the one drop rule, you're
technically black.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah technically I am.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, so you get a pass on this one like that.
But I also feel like it was just very important
to also just share your mother's story because I can
just only imagine so many other women who have experienced
this and just just like yourself, discovering their heritage. It's
a lot to take in.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
It is a lot. It's a lot to take in.
I think when you make a discovery as an adult,
because your identity is so fixed, you know, it's totally fixed.
And then to find out, well, that's not that's not
your total identity. There's something else you don't know. So
how do you integrate that exactly? Yeah? Put yourself back together? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So God bless your mother, man, because what a story. Story.
And to the listeners, if you have any questions or anything,
or you want to just follow up with my amazing guests,
please make sure to email me a hello at thephgpodcast
dot com and I'll just carry you. What's next for you?
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Well, I'm doing a lot of promo for What They
Never Told Us and I'm not sure what I'm going
to write next. I've been there's several projects in mind.
Can I ask you? Do we have time for me
to read a little excerpt? Yeah, go ahead, Okay, I'm
excited to read this from What They Never Told Us
and it's true stories of family secrets and hidden identities,
(51:04):
and it really does in some ways play into my
mother's story of finding out you're something for someone you know,
different than you thought you were. And I do I'll
do a real quick setup. This is from the last chapter,
which is titled Strangers Keep Telling Me Their Secrets, which
they keep by the way. And this is an instant
(51:28):
that happened at a conference I was at called Untangling
Our Roots. And it's the first day of the conference,
and this conference is for adoptees don't or conceive people
and non parental event people, so people who have different
parents than they thought they had. So I'm sitting at
my author table and I'm been signing books and I'm
about ready to leave, right So suddenly I'm packing up.
(51:53):
A woman is standing in front of my table, maybe
in her mid thirties, though I'm a terrible judge of age,
brown hair, casually dressed. There's an edge to her lanyard
is twisted, so I can't see her name or what
state she's from. You're the reason I came, she says emphatically.
I wasn't going to come, but I saw your name.
(52:15):
I drove here from Central Illinois. From the intensity of
her gaze, the way she leans in her hand listing
on one of my books, I sense she desperately wants
to tell me something. I'm both pleased but wary. My
mother's story sometimes lisits unexpected emotional reactions from people. The
(52:37):
woman's gaze drifts away toward the DNA Angels booth as
she gathers her thoughts. I wait. Then she looks at
me and begins to tell me her story. Two weeks ago,
I got my DNA results. Shocker, my dad's not my dad.
I asked my mom about it. At first, she wouldn't
(52:57):
tell me. Then she did, and while she was separated
from my dad, she had an affair with this guy
she knew. She thought she couldn't get pregnant. I guess
she was wrong, right, I'm just glad my dad's no
longer here. Do you know who your birth father is?
I asked, After almost two years of interviewing people who've
(53:18):
had these parental discoveries, the question comes easily. She scoffs.
It's a small town. I know who he is. As
soon as they found out. I marched over to his house,
knocked on his door and told him I was his daughter.
He told me to leave and not come back. End
of story. Wow, mouth is tied with anger and hurt.
(53:40):
I'm sorry, I say, Of all the people's stories of
parental discoveries I've listened to, none of them were so
recent and so wrong. Look, I'm a businesswoman. I run
my own travel agency people work for me. I can
handle this, she pauses. I'm not sure if I'm going
to stay. I just want to meet you. You might
(54:02):
want to stick around and check out some of the panels,
I offer, believing that the panels might help her. I
don't know. Thanks anyway. It's the second day of the summit.
Late in the afternoon. There's a line of people waiting
to buy my book, probably because they attended my author panel.
The line starts to dwindle. I look up after signing
(54:22):
a copy of my book and see the woman from yesterday.
She waits until everyone leaves. I thought I could handle this,
but I can't. She starts to cry. I hold her
hand while she cries. There's nothing else I can do
except to say it's good you stayed.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Man.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
From my own discovery experience and from listening to others
with similar experiences, I know the difficult journey that lies
ahead for her as she begins putting the pieces of
her identity back together. As I hand her my car,
I tell her to email me via my website if
she wants to talk. I never hear from her again.
(55:08):
When I think about the stories in this book and
the bravery of the people sharing them. I think about
with the novelist Cigarette Newness said at the end of
her novel The Friend, what we miss, what we lost,
and what we mourn. Isn't this what makes us who,
deep down we truly are. From these splintered pieces of
(55:29):
who we once thought we were, we heal and forge
our new selves.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Come, mom, it's better push that pin. That's what I'm
talking about. You know what, one more question, and the
reason why I'm asking you this question is because you know,
I talk to a lot of different people from different
walks of life, and you know, I feel like people
resonate with my platform because you know, a lot of
the stories that I do cover we don't really talk
about within the black community, especially when it comes to
(55:56):
sexual abuse. But for me, I don't always want to
highlight the negativity of what goes on within black womanhood, right.
But also I understand the importance of having these stories
on the show. So for you, you know, all these
people from the woolworks of sharing a family secrets and
telling you all these things like is it ever too
much for you?
Speaker 3 (56:15):
Yeah? Yeah, Honestly, this last book about did it for
me emotionally. The way I work is. Once the Zoom
interviews over, I go over the interview and I take
word for word what they said. So I'm re experiencing
some of the emotional things that have happened to these people.
(56:36):
And with Brad Yule's story, for some reason, he started
talking about lost opportunities. And when I was listening to
his story, my brother was near death. So I'm trying
to navigate his story and then dealing with my own
emotional crisis of losing my only sibling very tragically. He
(56:56):
died of a brain bleed which caused strogg and he
lingered for a while, and it was a terrible thing.
There's a whole cheap from my brother and lost opportunities,
and how important it is not to let these opportunities go. So, yeah,
I had after listening to Brad, I took a month off.
I emotionally couldn't go back right away. It was too much.
(57:19):
My brother died in December, and yeah, it was hard
to go back.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, I need an autograph coffee, however much of costs
I need. You have a fan in.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Me, Oh you're so great. Yeah, give me your info
and definitely you'll get one.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah, because what a story man? I'm so happy that
we cross paths. I'm really am yeah too. This has
been one of my favorite episodes from the season, so
I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 3 (57:49):
Oh my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Thank you, Thank you. And to listeners, like I said,
reach out to me if you want to know more
about our guests. And until next time, everyone, later you're
gonna say bye bye. The Professional Homegirl podcast is a
(58:11):
production of the Black Effect podcast Network. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Don't forget to subscribe
and rate the show, and you can connect with me
on social media at the PHG podcast
Welcome one and all to the Professional Homegirl Podcast. Before
we begin today's episode, we want to remind you that
the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those
of the host and guests and are intended for educational
and entertaining purposes. In this safe space, no question is
off limits because you never know how someone's storyline can
be your lifeline. The Professional Homegirl Podcast is here to
(00:22):
celebrate the diverse voices, stories and experiences of women of color,
providing a platform for authentic and empowering conversations. There will
be some key king, some tears, but most importantly a
reminder that tough times don't last, but professional homegirls do
enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
On this week's episode of the Professional Homegirl Podcast, we
dive into the incredible story of a woman who uncover
a life alter and family secret. Now she always believed
she knew her mother until a shock and discovery revealed
that her mother had been passing as white, leaving behind
her black identity. In this powerful conversation, she shares her
(01:12):
emotional journey on unraveling the truth, confronting her mother's past,
and redefining her own sense of self. Tune in as
we explore race, family and the wait of hidden histories,
and my mom lived her life passing as a white woman.
Starting now, all right, to my guests, thank you so
(01:32):
much for being on a show. How you doing, how
you feeling?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I am doing really well. Good. Thanks for having me
on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of course, I was just telling her you all before
we started the episode that I really enjoyed your book.
I just really enjoyed your story, very inspiring.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah. Now, before we dive into your personal journey, I
want to talk about your background as a mystery writer.
So you spent many years crafting intricate plots and solving
fictional puzzles, but in many ways, you ended up uncovering
the biggest mystery of your life. So did you feel
as if your skills is a mystery writer help you
navigate the shock and discovery about your mother's racial identity?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yes? And no. Well, actually, the initial discovery was a
shock that I was not prepared for, yeah at all.
But as I started my own research and started putting
pieces together, that's when more than mystery writer skills came
(02:36):
into play. And you know, it's funny you asked that question, because,
as you know, I was on Genealgie Road Show, and
that show used to beyond PBS, and you have to
fill out a form to be on. So I started
out my form was saying, I'm a mystery author who
(02:58):
has a mystery in her own family she can't solve
with any certainty. And they love that.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
They thought, oh, okay, is this the biggest story that
you uncovered as far as a mystery writer your own?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yes, short of anyone getting murdered. Right, No one got
murdered when I was uncovering.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
This, right now, did you know about racial passing and
insignificance in America before you knew about your mother's story?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I did. I don't know what year this was. Imitation
of Life. Do you remember that movie that was a
big deal? I think it was.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
It wasn't in black and white, I no, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It was in color. The second one. The first one was,
you're right, I'm thinking of the one I saw as
a young person, and so that made me very aware
of that of passing. And but you know, I was
being aware of it, and then find out your mother
is passing.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, you know. I was so excited about your conversation,
and I was speaking to my best friend about it,
and she told me how her great grandmother passed and
she learned about it, and I was like, oh, wow,
Like it's like I feel like now racial pass is
like starting to come to the forefront of a lot
of conversation when it comes to race.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I think you're right. However, when my mother was passing, no,
you never reveal that you know family members, never to
reveal another family member is passing. That's sort of an
unwritten rule, right because it could be dangerous. My mom
was born in New Orleans in nineteen twenty one, so
(04:35):
we still had segregation and a lot of violence toward
people of color. I'm just lynchings things like that. So
back then, in my mother's era, you didn't talk about that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Do you think passing still happens in different forms today?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I do. I don't have any evidence of that, but
I would guess it does. Yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So, looking back, do you think your mother would have
understood why you chose to share her story?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You know, I'm not sure. There's a part of me
that thinks, yes, she totally would want this, because she
always wanted me to speak up about injustice of any kind,
and she would you know she could say something, so
I think, in one hand, yes, she would have. But
(05:30):
then when I did confront her in nineteen ninety seven
with all my evidence that she was passing, she swore
me to secrecy. She you know I had. It was
after my father's death, so I had visit her. I
asked her to visit me in Illinois. I grew up
(05:50):
in Ohio. So when I told her, Mom, I have
your birth certificate, because I did right to the State
of Louisiana for my mother's birth certificate. I pretended I
was my mother and I lost my birth certificate, and
so of course they sent it to me. And on
her birth certificate in parentheses are three letters col me
(06:15):
is colored, right, So just to be sure, because I'm
a researcher, I sent another letter to the State of
Louisiana and said, would you explain what col means to
the state, And they sent me a really long letter
and they said, in most instances, col means a person
of color, and many times a person of African descent.
(06:37):
So I had my evidence, and when I said to
my mom, I have the birth certificate, she she got
very angry. She said, I don't know a birth certificate
you have, but mine says I'm white. So I took
a beat and I because I could see she was upset,
and then I said, well, mom, I've got your birth certificate.
(07:00):
I have some other documentation I like to show you,
and it does not say you're white. So she got
very very quiet, like she kind of shrunk into herself.
And then she looked at me and she said, you
can never tell anyone until after I die, because how
will I hold my head up with my friends. Yeah,
(07:23):
that's how much fear and shame she was caring. And
then I said I only had one sibling, my brother's
recently died.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
But I said, can I do?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Is very sad. I said, well, can I tell my brother?
And she said no, not even him. I did not
feel good about keeping this secret. What I thought in
my mind, though, was it's not my secret, it's hers.
So I'm going to honor what she wants. And she
(07:54):
lived a long time. She lived in ninety two, So
I kept your secret for seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That's a long time to keep a secret. Ninety two years.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yes, and then the only people I told, of course,
I felt I had to tell my husband and my
two children. And then I had a very good friend
that I shared it with, but that was it. I
didn't tell any God.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Bless your mother, because I've been reading a lot about
like racial pasts and stuff, and I think you wrote
in your book you was like a lot of times
people racial pass for just security and for a better life,
and I can only imagine how painful that was for
her to leave her community and just her family behind.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was in some ways, but in other ways. I
don't think as much for maybe someone who was very
tight with their family. My mother came from a very
chaotic family. She was not raised by either parent, so
she was sort of shuffled around to grandmas and so
(08:49):
I think that might have made it easier for her. Yeah,
But I don't know, because every time I tried to
talk to her, oh god, yeah, yeah, she would say
to me what I would bring a she go, so
how are the kids?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Like?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Okay, I know she's not going.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
To tell me so right. Well, And of course her
daughter discover her.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Truth, yeah, absolutely. And not only did I discover it,
I decided to write.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
About it, I know, and go on National TV.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
On National TV, and as you would say, I outed
my mother. Yeah, on national TV, which you know, I
struggle with that a little bit, but till then. No,
when I initially decided to go on television, but then
I justified it by thinking, well, she said until I die.
(09:43):
So she was deceased. She died in twenty fourteen, and
that opportunity to be on PBS's genealogy road show was
game three months after her death. That's how close it was.
So I thought, okay, well I kept the vow. I
(10:04):
did it, so now it's time. Yeah. And I also
thought this would help other people.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know, no, I think so. I believe so too.
So how did this affect you personally? Because I know
in the book you mentioned how you had questions about
your own identity.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Absolutely, it took me a long long time to figure
out my identity. And you know, over since the book
came out and I've been on the Today Show, I
get Initially, I got a lot of email through my website,
and most of it was positive. I'm not going to
(10:39):
but there were always people who question my motives, who
thought I was after something that I wasn't so, and
then then every time I did a presentation or I
was on television or the radio, I could count on
one question. Now that you know your heritage, how do
you racially identify? Right? Everyone wanted to know that. So
(11:02):
in the beginning, I thought the best way to identify too,
because I hadn't suffered at racism, Look at me as
white as can be. Yeah, so you know, I'm not
going to get up there and claim something that I
have no right to claim. So I said, well, I'm
a white woman with black heritage. And when I gave
(11:23):
a talk in Saint Louis, there was a black woman
in the audience who actually asked me that. And when
I gave that answer, she said, well, there's no other
answer you can give. I'm the president of the Black
Caucus here in Saint Louis. That's the right answer. So
I thought, Okay. Then when I was on the Today Show,
you know, Megan Kelly was the host, she asked me
(11:45):
the same question. I gave the same answer. About two
weeks later on Amazon and this woman identifies herself as black,
just squres me in her comment. She hasn't read the
book though she took me on the show. She said,
I'm telling all black people not to read this book.
(12:06):
You are not to read this book. This woman has
not properly honored her black heritage.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Why did she say that?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
I wish I knew. I wish I knew, So, you know,
I started thinking about it. That was really the start
of my journey to redefine my racial identity because I
and it also was like a revelation to me that
no matter how I was going to identify, I was
going to make somebody unhappy, and it had less to
(12:39):
do with me and more to do with their agenda.
So it took me a while. I kept identifying as
white with black heritage, and then finally, I know, some
years later, I don't know how many years later, I
kind of put the pieces together rethought it. I was
on this podcast called My American Melting Pot, and the
(13:02):
host was a black woman. She said to me, you
understand that every time you talk, you're sort of an
ambassador to white people explain to them blackness. And I thought, well,
that's not my intention. I'm a storyteller. But then they
got me thinking and I thought, okay, well, yeah, I'm
(13:25):
out there, I'm saying these things. I'm trying to just
tell my mother's story. So everyone's aware of how racial
designations in this country hold people back, how they hold
them back, and how you know, my family, my mother's family,
you know, in nineteen hundreds senses they're black, and then
(13:47):
in nineteen thirty senses my grandfather, Asima Frederick, is white.
It's crazy, h That's just crazy. So at that point
I decided, well, think about what makes up your racial identity.
So I have DNA, which seven and nine percent African heritage.
(14:08):
Then I have my ancestry, my ancestors, what they endured.
Because I traced the family, the Fredericks, all the way
back to seventeen hundreds colonial Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You did a lot of research, Miss Gail.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh. I had help. I'm not going to take all
the credit.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But you, your husband, everybody.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Everybody helped me. And I found Marda an enslaved woman,
and I saw what she endured. Though she was emancipated
by her enslaver, but she bore him seventeen and that
seventeen seven thirteen children. Oh yeah, during the first four
she was enslaved and the rest she freed her and
(14:48):
the children. So anyway, I and then I, you know,
you just trace the history of the family through all
these racial designations and how they were held back, and
and then I thought, you know, I need to claim this.
I need to claim this in a bigger way than
what I was claiming it. So when the twenty twenty
(15:10):
census came out, you know, we all had opportunities to
declare what we thought we were. So I ended up
saying I was mixed race. And now when I give
a talk, that's what I say, and if people have
a problem with it, I invite them to talk to
me about it so that we can have a dialogue.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
We need to start cursing people out. That's what you
need to do, because if I'm being honest with you, miss,
you are their first white presenting woman I ever had
on my show, right because my platform is built Yeah,
my platform is built for women of color. But when
I read your story, I did my research on you,
(15:54):
and I also, you know, I for some reason, I
just had a really soft spot for your mom, and
I feel like when I read your story, you were
very honest about the history of race in America, and
also you were very honest about how you the experience
you was navigating through, and the feelings you was going through.
So I think it was kind of annoying how people
would questioning you because I don't think you I don't
(16:14):
feel like you had any ill intent at all. I
think you were just discovering something that you never knew
even existed, and it was a big discovery.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It was huge to me, though, I have to tell
you again, you know, I'm under public scrutiny. So sometimes
they would get emails or indirect things posted. Well, you know,
why is it that white people when they find they
have black ancestries are so surprised? What's the big deal? Right?
But that's not why I did it. But it has
(16:45):
nothing to do with that. I wanted to show what
my mother suffered, what my family suffered, what racism in
America looks like from the beginning, but only, of course,
only in Louisiana because that's where my family lived. So
but that's a good example. And you know, I have
(17:06):
a Civil War hero, Leon Frederick, who was a person
of color and he was part of the first Colored
Troops Native Guards in Louisiana. He was with the Union.
I was so proud of him. I wanted that out there.
I wanted people to start doing kind of a mind
shift about things. But I would love to curse people
(17:29):
out However, what this then we're in an argument. Seriously,
I really would.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, because I'm I'm me questioning when I am, like
my mother's back, like, I'm ALTI racial? What do you
think I am?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah? Well, because of the way I look. I think
that's part of the problem, right people. Even recently, I
had someone I don't know how they got to me
on Facebook, I don't know. I think it was a woman,
and she said she was explaining to me that I
should not be ashamed of my white heritage. Shake my white.
(18:12):
It's like, because I was saying I was mixed, that
meant I was ashamed of being white. No, right, that's
not it, right, I don't know. I think I unfriended her.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, So how do you think the one drop rule
continues to shape conversations around race and identity today?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Well, you know, supposedly we don't anymore in the South
to define race, right, you know when my mother was
growing up, Yes, the one drop role, if you had
one drop of African blood, you are considered black. So
that does not that is not a legal thing anymore.
(18:57):
So I don't know how much it affects us today.
I still think we're making decisions very much on appearance.
We are looking at people and still doing that and
then having a set of stereotypes in our brain based
on people's appearances.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So looking back, were there are moments in your childhood
where you now realize your mother was protecting her secret?
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yes? I yes, And that did not come to me
until I wrote White Like Her started putting the pieces together,
and I had this very vivid memory as I was
a young girl, my mother she came, I sat on
her bed in her bedroom, and she started telling me
tales of New Orleans, and the one that really stuck
(19:48):
out in my mind. She told the tale. It was
a true story, not a tale, of witnessing a black
woman coming down the banquette the sidewalk into Oran and
she was burdened with all these groceries. She was an
older woman, and a white man is approaching her and
she's struggling, and because she didn't get off the sidewalk
(20:11):
for him, he pushed her off the sidewalk and all
her grocery fell and all her And my mother said
to me, you never treat people that way. That's the
wrong way to treat people. She was giving me a
secret message that took me a long time to cope, right.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, I feel like she was break from here and there.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Oh, absolutely yeah. And of course she had all these
quirks that I just thought she was just I had
a quirky mom. You know, we all think, don't we
all think her mom's a little anyway, right, I'm sure my.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Daughter thinks, I know.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Anyway, I just thought, well, you know, mom, never go
out in the sun without a hat. She liked she would.
She would never, you know, she never Sunday, that's for sure.
And then she had this other weird habit. She would
wear make up a light foundation on her face before
she went at night. And I didn't think any of
it when I was really young, but when I got
(21:12):
to be a teenager, I thought, why is she wearing
making I don't wear. Yeah, so I questioned her, and
then she has this weird explanation about you never know
when you're going to get sick in the middle of
the night. Then the ambulance comes for you, and you
want to look your best because you'll get better treatment
at the hospital. So I thought, I don't know about that,
(21:35):
but that's what she said.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I was when you was talking about her doing
a makeup and even a heat even with she I
think she waited a certain amount of time to give
birth to your brother because she had fears of maybe
the child coming out darker.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Well, I don't know. I mean when I asked her
why there was a five year gap, my mom was
very religious, so I have to kind of accept this.
She said, well, that's what God intended, you know, very religious.
But I also think she must have been thinking that.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, I would have been thinking that, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Because that's her background. And when I spoke with her
first cousin, who was of her generation, the only one surviving,
her name was you would call her cousin, you got it,
And she explained that to me. She says, oh, yeah,
we always waited to see the complexion of the baby,
(22:40):
so I'm sure that was in my mom's mind. My
mom had sort of an olive complexion. She always claims
that people thought she was Italian, that kind of thing,
so that was always on her mind.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Right. So, in today's climb, and how do you think
your mother's life would have been different if she openly
identify as black, Well.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I would hope it would be a lot better because
there are more opportunities you know, I'm not going to
say we're there yet, and we're not there yet racially
in this country, for sure, but we've made some strides forward,
and I think she might might if she had been
(23:24):
of my generation, she might have been able to embrace it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, And do you believe she carry like guilt?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yes, I do. I think she did. There were only
certain family members that were allowed to visit us. I
didn't know this at the time, as I referred to
in the book and quote passable people who could pass
for white. So my father wouldn't know. And after the
(23:55):
book came out, Uncle Homer, who was my mother's full brother,
his daughter I never met him. His daughter, Phoebe, actually
called me to talk to me. And Uncle Homer married
a woman of colors, so the children were so. Phoebe said, oh,
when your mother and father and brother came to visit
(24:16):
us in New Orleans, if I was already married, I
could not be at the house. And I said, what
do you mean. She said, well, I couldn't be a
Grandma Camille's house because I was too dark. She told
me not to come. M I felt terrible, and she
seemed to like accept it, like, well, that's why it
was and we didn't want your father to know.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
You think your dad knudough or had an idea.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I guess cousin you were that And she said he
didn't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I'll never know, because I feel like when you was
describing the argument they had and he was like, before
I met you, you didn't have any shoes. In a way,
he was talking about black people, and I feel like
your mom was like she was trying to like, you know,
not it obvious, but like, you can't treat people like that.
I don't know. I feel like he had maybe had
an idea, or maybe he just felt like something was off.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
He might have thought something was off. But then you know,
they met during the war, so he was in Mississippi.
He went to New Orleans on R and R. That's
where they met, so he was probably familiar with how
people in New Orleans little creoles and all of that.
I'm sure my mother's I can't prove this, but I'm
sure somehow she got her hands on a white birth certificate.
(25:28):
She had to how I mean, how else could she
have gotten married in Ohio without a birth certificate?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
So somehow she maneuvered this and you know, my mom
was a very beautiful woman, and I'm sure my father thought,
holy cow, I'm so lucky. I'm not going to question
too much right now, right, No, she was really pretty, Yeah,
she was pretty gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, so you decide to share your story on national
TV to sharing your family story, how did the reactions
of your friends and your families respond to it? Because
your father was also he was a racist?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, you know, I guess you could say that. And
I'm not making excuses.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right, so I get it.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, he's my dad, and he grew up you know,
at a certain time. He's born nineteen eighteen. He grew
up in a very ethnic neighborhood. You know, there's a
lot of immigrants, so there it was not it's not right,
but there was a lot of bigotry and racism. So
(26:36):
he was continuing that though I never ever ever heard
him say the end word, right, So I don't know
if and this is going to sound so patronizing, so
forgive me, but one of his best friends at work
was a black man. Argacy that right, that he loved him.
They were friends. So how do you get that in
(26:59):
your how do you you know what I mean? Figure
that out. So, yeah, I think he was a bigger.
He was a racist, sure, and I'm not going to
say he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, how did his family feel about you sharing a
story like was somebody like I shared?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
His generation were already dead right now, I'm dealing with
my cousins. And I went back home after the book came,
I was invited to a talk the library, and some
of my cousins came. They were great, They said, we
had no idea, but this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know, generation is different than the old generation.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
They're different. I had no backlash from any of my
family or my friends. I had one friend say to me,
you know, I'm kind of upset with you. You kept that
secret from me, and I'm your friend. You never told me.
So everyone was good about it. I had no problems
with anybody.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah. Were you concerned about how the black community or
the white community would perceive your mother's decision to pass?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I did a talk at a bookstore in Hyde Park
in Illinois, Chotta. Yeah, And it was a mixed audience.
And there was a point where and I was in
conversation with a professor from U S where I did
my graduate work, and she's a black woman. And so
there's a point where suddenly, and I don't know why
(28:24):
this happened, the audience shifted and started criticizing my mother.
I don't see why she thought she had to leave.
That was the community. She should have staying in her
community and gotten support. I was sort of taken aback,
so I didn't say anything right away, and then the
(28:44):
professor came in and said, look, guys, you're blaming the
victim here, right, Let's not do that. So she kind
of shut it down. But yeah, I mean I don't
know that. Yeah, I've received that. I've seen that you.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Have to like do you travel with somebody or like
do you have a routine, because I can only imagine
what you have to do to get your mind ready
for these conversations, because you don't know how it can go.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I never know, right well, you know, I had many
years of teaching on a university level, so anytime you
walk into it from day to day, it's like I
never know. So yeah, yeah, I don't always travel with someone.
Sometimes they go alone, but usually you know, if it's
(29:29):
the library that's brought me in, they'll have someone pick
me up and take me there and back. So I
have a very strange experience. You're probably thinking of that
from the book early on. This is actually before the
book came out, but after I was on the road show,
I gave a talk at a genealogy society which is
about an hour from my houses. And the audience was
(29:52):
all white except for this one woman who was of
Asian descent. So in the middle of my talk and
there was obviously something wrong with her because she I
was getting towards the end. I was about done, and
she gets up and she said, and it comes up
to the you know where I'm staying singing right, she
starts singing. She starts, and I could see the person
(30:15):
who's posting going home. Oh we got it, so yeah,
I hit the things on my feet. I didn't know
what song she was singing. I just kind of let
her sing and then I quick and then plowted and said,
well that's great. Now I like to Is it okay
if I finish? She did. She went and sat down.
But then as I'm leaving, it's a really dark parking
(30:39):
lot and I'm leaving a little bit before everyone else.
She follows me do the parking lot and I'm pulling
my little suitcase with all my books. It's like, I'm
a little hobbled and I'm trying to get to my
car and she just keeps talking blah blah blah, and
she's saying these kind of weird things, and I'm not
sure what to do. So again I had to think quickly,
(31:00):
and I said, you know, I came in this parking,
but I'm not sure how to get out of it.
Can you show me how? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So
they got her brain out of whatever she was thinking,
and she gave me directions and then I got in
my clock and I was so shook up. I actually
went the wrong way.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, because like, girl, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
It's like, no, I knew that something was off there,
and you don't you want to be very nice and
kind and get her fight box.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, something was clearly wrong with her though.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, No, it had nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, you know what, I'm curious, what do you think
about white women who get the braids they want to
be black, they tanny skin, they say they black, they
act like black people, Like, what are your thoughts on that?
Because I can't think of the lady's name, But remember
that one.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Who?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Oh, I know, yeah, Rachel, my girl, Rachel.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, yeah, you know. I have her in the second book.
What they never told us because I tell a story
in there of a woman for her last name is
virtil vera.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Bird a bird, Yes I know what it is, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, and older lady bird a bird, and that's her name. Anyway.
The only reason she came out with her story we
was because of Rachel Dulcany. She was furious with this
woman doing that.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Rachel was trying to though, Miss gil Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Mean, come on, come on, I just to me, it's wrong.
I'm all for people embracing things, but not the way,
not what she did that. That's that's co opting someone
else's heritage, their identity. It's co opting something you have
no right to. If you want to talk about race
(32:55):
in America and you know what's happened, you don't do
it that way, right, you know, there are other ways
you can do it. You can do it the way
I'm doing it, right, You don't have to do that. Yeah, No,
I'm not. I'm not not a fan. Okay, let's that way.
I'm not a fan of that. And you know when
(33:15):
people accuse me. Oh, the only reason you are telling
your stories you want reparations? Hell no, right, no, right, yeah,
good for that?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
No, right, because girls.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Can you see me showing up for reparations. I don't
think that's gonna work anyway, right, not gonna happen, And
that would be wrong, even though I have ancestors who
would be entitled, you know, but no, that's not that's
(33:50):
not what I do. So yeah, no, I'm not in
favor of that.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
What was the most surprising thing you discovered while researching
your family history beyond your mother's secret.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh that's a hard one. Yeah, that's I got to
think for a minute. Well, I wasn't surprise learning about Marta.
My goal when I sat down. I had several goals
when I sat down to write White like Her, because
in the beginning, some people were talking about, oh, you
should do a fiction book because you're a fiction writer,
(34:21):
and then others were saying, no, do nonfiction, and then
I decided nonfiction was better. So once I got back
to Marta, Marta by the Ways and other books, other
research books, which I was shocked because not only was
she enslaved, okay, so her mother was enslaved, I'm pretty
(34:43):
sure her mother was brought from Africa. It is either
her mother. It's hard because there's no there are no records,
so we have to kind of make leaps and do
it logically. She was part of this estate in Louisiana, huge.
These people were very wealthy, and she of course was
(35:03):
inherited as part of the property. I hate to see
these things, but it's true, this is what happened. I'm
not going to sugarcoat this. So as I said, she
had and I would talk about this in the book
because you cannot look at this as she had free will.
She had no free will, and that sometimes in my research,
(35:27):
as usually I hate to say this a male who's suggesting, well,
these women had free will. No, No, she's yeah. And
when I read her papers the reasons given for her freedom,
I got furious. Yeah, I was so angry. There's no
free will. So after she had the fourth child, as
(35:47):
I said, he freed her, and the fourth children went
on to have a total of thirteen. This is what
surprised me when in his will when he died, he
divided his estate, which is very usual, and you're talking
about seventeen hundreds. Half went tomato and half the children.
So they were free people of color who now are
(36:08):
in the middle class because they have an estate, they
have some wealth, which is very unusual, right, very unusual.
So I mean, you can look at it however you
want to look at it. But that did surprise me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
You know one thing that surprised me about your story
when you was on your research, how you discovered that
a lot of birth records had errors and yes, yeah,
and it made me think about my birth certificate because
I was trying to get my Social Security card like
many years ago, and I was telling the lady that
my birthday was February the eighth, and she was like, no,
(36:46):
that's not your birthday. And I'm like, girl, how are
you gonna tell me? And come to find out, somebody
put February third for my birthday. Yeah, you're kidding.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
So when nobody caught it, nobody caught that it was wrong.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Right, So when I was reading your story, I was like,
my goodness, Like, I can only imagine how many families
are dealing with those errors that happened many years ago
or centuries ago.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, centuries ago. You know that. Really, I know, we're
talking about white like her. But that really comes into
play in that my latest book, What They Never Told Us,
Because these are all true stories of people who find
out that either one or both of their parents aren't
their parents, which means there's something wrong with their birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And in one case, this one man, Brad Yule, who
he's just retired, he's a Texas cop. He takes a
DNA test him and his wife for fun.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Let's have fun, right, I wish I had some fun
like that. Take a dn DNA.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Has some fun, right, So, and then they post results
on Amazon and not Amazon on ancestry. So anyway, two
years later, he gets this strange message from a woman
claiming to be his maternal aunt. He doesn't know who
she is. Theyn't know who she is. So the first
thing he does, because he's a copy, wants to help
(38:08):
her so she can find the real nephew. He pulls
out his firsth certificate and his wife's because they were
born in Dallas the same year in nineteen seventy, compares them.
They couldn't have been more different. Where hers has a
hospital where she was born, has a cash where her
father signed their certificate. His father's name is typed in
(38:32):
long story short, he finds out he was adopted at
forty eight. He finds Ai didn't know, and it gets
even better. Not only is he adopted, but he goes
in search of who his biological parents are. Moms decease.
His dad is still alive, but he's serving a life
(38:53):
sentence in Angola prison for murder.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
What.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yes, this is the most beenantastic story you'll ever here.
Everyone wants to read it by what they never told us. Yes,
what he does afterwards truly inspirational and amazing.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Wow, could you imagine your daddy in jail?
Speaker 3 (39:15):
No, no, nope, nope. People who read the book who
don't have these surprises started they told me the star
never searched this because and counting back was like, wait a.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Minute, do I ever see You're gonna wait? Nobody had
any intentions of telling him.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
No, he actually called. The first thing he did when
he figured it out was he called his adopted dad
and he said he on. They were on the phone
and he liked hemmed and hawed, and then finally he
admitted it, and his dad said to him, well, we've
been trying to find a way to tell you that. Yeah,
you've been.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Trying for forty eight years, right.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
To tell me, He goes, that was the next lie, right.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Right, Come on, one thing I like about you. I
feel like you are just so fun and you're very honest.
So what conversations about privileged race and systemic inequality they're
writing this book force you to tell yourself?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Okay? You know I'm an educator, right, so I'm very
aware of and I'm a historian. I'm very interested in history.
So I've been aware of systemic racism through history, through time.
So what changed for me? And I hope I'm answering
your question. It's not that I didn't know. I did know,
(40:39):
But when you find out, oh, it's not something in
a history book, like slavery is not something in a
history book. Slavery is something my ancestors had to deal
with that was interested on them. It changes everything because
it's well, that's that's my tribe. Yeah, you're messing with
(41:02):
my people. It really so it becomes visceral, like physical
for me. That's when I said to you, when I
saw what the enslaver wrote why he freed Marta, is like,
you got a heck of a lot of nerves saying
in regards to her affection toward you. What choice did she? Yeah,
(41:24):
give me a break? Yeah, I get really worked up
about that. It really bothers me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, I feel like when people read your book, and
I also feel like for yourself, like you found a
new understanding of sacrifices and struggles that our generation has
had to endure.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Yes. Absolutely, you know, like I was saying, my mom
had these quirky habits, and after I did my research,
and you know, she would not talk about passing. So
I do a lot of research to understand what that
was in terms of what you gave up, what were
the pluses and and what that did to a person.
(42:02):
And I really had a deeper understanding for her. But
I also have a real sadness for our relationship because
I felt like, you know, she saw I was keeping
the secrets. Yeah, and I tried to talk to her
about it. If she would only have talked to me, Yeah,
how deeper our relationship would have been. I wasn't going
(42:25):
to tell anybody. She had to trust me. But I
think it was so ingrained in her that she was
in such a state of denial that she just couldn't
talk about it. Yeah, you know, it just wasn't. And
the same goes for my dad. You know, we talked
about his racism, and you know, he served in World
War Two and he was in for the duration in
(42:47):
the South Pacific. Until I got his records from the
hospital when he had the medical issues, I had no
understanding what this man went through.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, you spoke about mental health.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Yes, yeah, and he was never the same and he
actually told the psychiatrists, I am not the same man
anymore and I'll never be. So I had more empathy
for him because it's hard growing up in an alcoholic households.
It's really for children of ahol alcoholics. It's a tough road. Yeah,
(43:21):
And so I had more understanding from what he went through.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
You know, while he was talking, I can just only
imagine that desire to have that relationship with your mother
the way that it possibly could have been, because if
she would have just been honest with you, I can
only imagine other things that you will probably unlocked.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
You know, And you know how I give myself consolation.
Had she shared it all right, I probably wouldn't have
been on the road show, and I probably not have
ridden because I would have had my answer my question
answered ready.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Part of the journey of the book is answering those
questions and tracing the family and figuring out how this
all began.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah. If your mother could see the impact of y'all
story today, what do you think she will say.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I want to believe that she would be proud of me.
Though she never ever said she was proud of me.
I would like to think she would have been proud
and she would have seen how much good has come
out of it.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah. Yeah, which one of the reasons why you wrote
your second book, because so many people were emailing you,
reaching out to you, telling you their family secrets.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Well, I was shocked because these were intimate things. Hey guys,
I'm a stranger, but I don't know. It must have
touched people in a way that they felt they could
trust me, and they were right, you can trust me. Yeah.
So that's why the people in the book there are
fourteen stories, but they trusted me.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And when I you know, I did all my interviews
on zoom, so they would say to me at the beginning,
I feel like I kind of know you already that
I can tell you, And so it cut through a
lot of you know, them being cleary of me, and
because I already told my story, so they felt they
could tell theirs.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yes, people feel seen.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Yeah they did, and everything in there is what they
told me.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So what advice would you give to someone today who
feels torn between two racial identities.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
I think that's very tough. Yeah, and I keep bringing
the book up. What they never told was one of
the stories of Bruce Paul Scott finds out he always
suspected something was up, but he finds out later in
life that his biological father was black. He's much older.
It affected him deeply in many ways, having people constantly
(45:51):
use racial slurs around him because of his appearance. That
we grew up in this very white Irish Catholic family
who kept telling you it's the recessive gene, which was
a lie. Right, So he said, to this day, I
accept I'm biracial. That's fine. I'm good with that, but
I'm still uncomfortable because I don't know what that actually means. Yeah,
(46:14):
because he doesn't have the cultural background of you know,
of his black heritage. She just has white.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, that's all he knows.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
That's how does he mesh those things together? So I
think that's hard and I wish I had an answer. Yeah,
I can only look at examples of people I've talked to.
Does that help?
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Yeah, no, it does.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I think it's very difficult when you look a certain
way but you identify another way, and you've been identifying
this way for many, many years, Like I couldn't even
imagine being black my entire life, and then come to
find out I'm white, Like, that's that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
I think there was someone at the end of white
like her who wrote me. I think her name was Paris.
I know if you remember her about No she's the
one who can pass. But she said, the white community
does not accept her black. So she's kind of like
in this limbo place with her race. Yes she doesn't.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about when I was
reading your book, when you first met your cousins and yeah,
had the family reunion, Like how was that for you?
Just seeing all these different types of people.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Awesome? It was, oh my god, it was They welcomed
me with open arms. You know, it was a reunion
to bring me back into the family, which, yeah, family
I didn't even know existed some of them, and that
they had a dinner in New Orleans and I sat
with uncle Fred, aunt Alma and Brenda, my husband and me,
(47:47):
and you know, my mom had only been dead a year,
so look, I kept staring at them. Yeah, and I
finally apologized because I was I'm missing my mom and
they looked so much much like her. It was like
she was there with us, you know. Yeah. It was
very emotional for me.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yes, yeah, you know what you look like. You can
cook me is but I can only imagine the food
you've been getting from your cousins and theli I had
the family reunion.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Oh yeah, you know, and my mom would cook New
Orleans stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Oh so I know she could cook.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, oh yeah, we had you know, red beans and
rice with shrimp on Fridays. I think I sa in
the book I make a joke I'm the only girl
from the Cleveland area who grew up on grits, right,
it's like which I have. My Polish husband cooks too. Now,
we have that all the time.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
I love me some grits.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
You come over, We'll have some grits.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yes, yes, I'm definitely gonna pull up on you for sure.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
All right.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
And last, when not least, looking back, how has uncovering
your mother's secret changed the way you see yourself.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Well, yeah, I don't see myself any or it is
just this white woman. I see myself as a mixed
race woman who has this rich, wonderful heritage that you know,
I'm proud of and I want people to know about it. Yeah,
that's why I'm talking about it. I you know, I'm
not hiding under you know, some shelf and some closet.
(49:17):
This is out there, It's been out there.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'm super excited we had this conversation.
This was definitely a treat for sure for me too.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and I'm very honored that I'm the only white person,
but I really am not totally.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Technically you're not white by the one drop rule, you're
technically black.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah technically I am.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, so you get a pass on this one like that.
But I also feel like it was just very important
to also just share your mother's story because I can
just only imagine so many other women who have experienced
this and just just like yourself, discovering their heritage. It's
a lot to take in.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
It is a lot. It's a lot to take in.
I think when you make a discovery as an adult,
because your identity is so fixed, you know, it's totally fixed.
And then to find out, well, that's not that's not
your total identity. There's something else you don't know. So
how do you integrate that exactly? Yeah? Put yourself back together? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So God bless your mother, man, because what a story. Story.
And to the listeners, if you have any questions or anything,
or you want to just follow up with my amazing guests,
please make sure to email me a hello at thephgpodcast
dot com and I'll just carry you. What's next for you?
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Well, I'm doing a lot of promo for What They
Never Told Us and I'm not sure what I'm going
to write next. I've been there's several projects in mind.
Can I ask you? Do we have time for me
to read a little excerpt? Yeah, go ahead, Okay, I'm
excited to read this from What They Never Told Us
and it's true stories of family secrets and hidden identities,
(51:04):
and it really does in some ways play into my
mother's story of finding out you're something for someone you know,
different than you thought you were. And I do I'll
do a real quick setup. This is from the last chapter,
which is titled Strangers Keep Telling Me Their Secrets, which
they keep by the way. And this is an instant
(51:28):
that happened at a conference I was at called Untangling
Our Roots. And it's the first day of the conference,
and this conference is for adoptees don't or conceive people
and non parental event people, so people who have different
parents than they thought they had. So I'm sitting at
my author table and I'm been signing books and I'm
about ready to leave, right So suddenly I'm packing up.
(51:53):
A woman is standing in front of my table, maybe
in her mid thirties, though I'm a terrible judge of age,
brown hair, casually dressed. There's an edge to her lanyard
is twisted, so I can't see her name or what
state she's from. You're the reason I came, she says emphatically.
I wasn't going to come, but I saw your name.
(52:15):
I drove here from Central Illinois. From the intensity of
her gaze, the way she leans in her hand listing
on one of my books, I sense she desperately wants
to tell me something. I'm both pleased but wary. My
mother's story sometimes lisits unexpected emotional reactions from people. The
(52:37):
woman's gaze drifts away toward the DNA Angels booth as
she gathers her thoughts. I wait. Then she looks at
me and begins to tell me her story. Two weeks ago,
I got my DNA results. Shocker, my dad's not my dad.
I asked my mom about it. At first, she wouldn't
(52:57):
tell me. Then she did, and while she was separated
from my dad, she had an affair with this guy
she knew. She thought she couldn't get pregnant. I guess
she was wrong, right, I'm just glad my dad's no
longer here. Do you know who your birth father is?
I asked, After almost two years of interviewing people who've
(53:18):
had these parental discoveries, the question comes easily. She scoffs.
It's a small town. I know who he is. As
soon as they found out. I marched over to his house,
knocked on his door and told him I was his daughter.
He told me to leave and not come back. End
of story. Wow, mouth is tied with anger and hurt.
(53:40):
I'm sorry, I say, Of all the people's stories of
parental discoveries I've listened to, none of them were so
recent and so wrong. Look, I'm a businesswoman. I run
my own travel agency people work for me. I can
handle this, she pauses. I'm not sure if I'm going
to stay. I just want to meet you. You might
(54:02):
want to stick around and check out some of the panels,
I offer, believing that the panels might help her. I
don't know. Thanks anyway. It's the second day of the summit.
Late in the afternoon. There's a line of people waiting
to buy my book, probably because they attended my author panel.
The line starts to dwindle. I look up after signing
(54:22):
a copy of my book and see the woman from yesterday.
She waits until everyone leaves. I thought I could handle this,
but I can't. She starts to cry. I hold her
hand while she cries. There's nothing else I can do
except to say it's good you stayed.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Man.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
From my own discovery experience and from listening to others
with similar experiences, I know the difficult journey that lies
ahead for her as she begins putting the pieces of
her identity back together. As I hand her my car,
I tell her to email me via my website if
she wants to talk. I never hear from her again.
(55:08):
When I think about the stories in this book and
the bravery of the people sharing them. I think about
with the novelist Cigarette Newness said at the end of
her novel The Friend, what we miss, what we lost,
and what we mourn. Isn't this what makes us who,
deep down we truly are. From these splintered pieces of
(55:29):
who we once thought we were, we heal and forge
our new selves.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Come, mom, it's better push that pin. That's what I'm
talking about. You know what, one more question, and the
reason why I'm asking you this question is because you know,
I talk to a lot of different people from different
walks of life, and you know, I feel like people
resonate with my platform because you know, a lot of
the stories that I do cover we don't really talk
about within the black community, especially when it comes to
(55:56):
sexual abuse. But for me, I don't always want to
highlight the negativity of what goes on within black womanhood, right.
But also I understand the importance of having these stories
on the show. So for you, you know, all these
people from the woolworks of sharing a family secrets and
telling you all these things like is it ever too
much for you?
Speaker 3 (56:15):
Yeah? Yeah, Honestly, this last book about did it for
me emotionally. The way I work is. Once the Zoom
interviews over, I go over the interview and I take
word for word what they said. So I'm re experiencing
some of the emotional things that have happened to these people.
(56:36):
And with Brad Yule's story, for some reason, he started
talking about lost opportunities. And when I was listening to
his story, my brother was near death. So I'm trying
to navigate his story and then dealing with my own
emotional crisis of losing my only sibling very tragically. He
(56:56):
died of a brain bleed which caused strogg and he
lingered for a while, and it was a terrible thing.
There's a whole cheap from my brother and lost opportunities,
and how important it is not to let these opportunities go. So, yeah,
I had after listening to Brad, I took a month off.
I emotionally couldn't go back right away. It was too much.
(57:19):
My brother died in December, and yeah, it was hard
to go back.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, I need an autograph coffee, however much of costs
I need. You have a fan in.
Speaker 3 (57:30):
Me, Oh you're so great. Yeah, give me your info
and definitely you'll get one.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah, because what a story man? I'm so happy that
we cross paths. I'm really am yeah too. This has
been one of my favorite episodes from the season, so
I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 3 (57:49):
Oh my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Thank you, Thank you. And to listeners, like I said,
reach out to me if you want to know more
about our guests. And until next time, everyone, later you're
gonna say bye bye. The Professional Homegirl podcast is a
(58:11):
production of the Black Effect podcast Network. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Don't forget to subscribe
and rate the show, and you can connect with me
on social media at the PHG podcast
Host
Eboné Almon
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!