A single decision, made a century ago, split a family by race.
Journalist Susan Saulny, prompted by Pope Leo's Black family roots, researched her Creole great-uncle who moved to Chicago, passed as white, and did not return. She describes her journey to reunite her family.
The story begins with a choice. A Creole great-uncle, light-skinned enough to navigate a segregated world, left his Southern roots behind. He moved to Chicago, a city of promise and anonymity. There, he made the decision to pass as white. That choice severed a thread.
He did not return. The family he left behind in the South moved on without him, creating two branches: one recognized as Black, the other hidden in whiteness. For a century, the silence held.
Saulny’s research uncovered this “lost” uncle. She traced his footsteps to the North, piecing together a narrative of ambition, fear, and loss. Her journey became a mission to heal a hundred-year-old wound.
“How does a family reunite after a century of separation by race, especially when part of it chose to disappear?”
In her reporting, Saulny found that the act of passing was not just a personal decision, but a structural one. It was a way to escape the brutal constraints of Jim Crow, but it came at the cost of identity, family, and history.
The family’s split highlights the arbitrary nature of racial lines. One man’s choice to step over that line created a gulf that took generations to recognize, let alone cross.
Now, the descendants are meeting. They are sharing photographs, stories, and a complicated legacy. The reunion is not about blame, but about reclamation. It is about claiming the history that was hidden, and acknowledging the pain of the fracture.
A century later, the door is finally open.