by Gail Lukasik
Copyright © 2017 by Gail Lukasik
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover and interior photographs courtesy of the author
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2412-9
eISBN: 978-1-5107-2415-0
Printed in the United States of America
For my mother, Alvera Frederic Kalina, whose courage lit the way. Thank you, mom, for your bravery and sacrifice.
The Central Figures in White Like Her
Gail Lukasik
B: Sept. 9, 1946
Alvera Frederic Kalina______Harold J. Kalina
B: Oct. 21, 1921, NO
B: Aug. 26, 1918, Ohio
D: Apr. 5, 2014, Ohio
D: Dec. 20, 1996, Ohio
Maternal First Cousin
Ula Duffant B: 1931, NO
Grandparents
Azemar Frederic____________Camille Kilbourne
B: Jan. 1897, NO
B: Jan. 1905, NO
D: July 1946, NO
D: Oct. 1982, NO
Stephen Kalina_____________Mary Thiery
B: 1895, Ohio
B: 1893, Ohio
D: 1949, Ohio
D: 1967, Ohio
1st Great Uncle and Aunt
Edward Nicholls___________Laura Baker
B: 1883, NO
B: 1884, NO
D: 1948, Ohio
D: 1968, Ohio
2nd Great-Grandfather and Grandmother
Leon Frederic Jr.___________Celeste Girard
B: Aug. 1868
B: 1872
D: Sept. 30, 1913
D: July 2, 1930
3rd Great-Grandfather and Grandmother
Leon Frederic, Sr.___________Philomene Lanabere
B: 1838, NO
B: 1840, NO
D: 1905, NO
D: 1891, NO
4th Great-Grandfathers and Grandmothers
Ursin Frederic_____________Roxelane Arnoux
B: Aug. 1, 1792
B: 1808, Cuba
D: 1856
D: 1882
Bernard Lanabere___________Felicite Dauphin
B: 1811
B: 1808
D: 1883
D: 1878
5th Great-Grandfathers and Grandmothers
Joseph Frederick Lestinet___________Luison Santilly
B: abt. 1743
B: 1765
D: 1813
D: ?
Catiche Dauphin_____________________Manuel Mayronne
B: 1782
B: 1790
D: 1849
D: 1850
6th Great-Grandfathers and Grandmothers
7th Great-Grandmother
Maria: B: abt. 1744 D: ?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
1: PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow Season Two Taping
2: Secrets and Lies
3: “There’s a Nigger in Every Woodshed.”
4: Getting Proof
5: The Vow
6: Creole, Anyone?
7: Taking Her Secret to the Grave
8: Serendipity
9: Taping Day, Libertyville, Illinois
10: Difficult Beginnings
11: Nothing Left to Lose
12: Random Acts of Passing
13: The Case of the Disappearance of Aunt Laura
14: Gens de Couleur Libre
15: Leon Frederic, Light Enough to Fight
16: The Vagaries of War
17: California Dreaming
18: Antebellum Love and Sex
19: Interracial Marriage Hidden
20: War’s Aftermath
21: Hiding in Plain Sight
22: Keeping Up Appearances
23: The Mystery of the Two Felicites and the Burden of Proof
24: Modeling Whiteness
25: Marta
26: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
27: Who’s Your Daddy?
28: Luison Santilly: Metisse
29: Going Public
30: What We Talk About When We Talk About Race
31: What We Talk About When We Talk About Passing
32: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
33: Lost Family Found
34: Crossing Back Over
35: Welcome to the Family
36: Two Versions of One Family Story
37: Union Station, Los Angeles, California
Acknowledgments
Notes
Plates
Foreword
By Kenyatta D. Berry, JD
Host, Genealogy Roadshow (PBS)
WHEN THE producers of Genealogy Roadshow approached me prior to the second season and said, “We have a story for you,” I was hesitant at first. It was a story about racial passing. Gail Lukasik, a mystery author, had come to the Roadshow asking if her mother had passed for white. She wasn’t sure of her mother’s racial heritage. I hesitated because I didn’t know how much Gail truly knew about her mother.
In the African American community, it is an unwritten rule that you do not “out” a person who is passing for white. And I was going to “out” her mother on a national television show. I felt as if I was betraying Gail’s mother, because I understood that she made a great sacrifice and a painful choice. As an African American woman who had family members who passed, I knew Gail’s mother had turned her back on her family, her friends, and her heritage. And in doing so, she’d assumed an identity that she barely knew but worked so hard to achieve. Her mother must have always lived in fear that someone might find her out. What if her children were born with darker skin? How could she explain that to her white husband?
The producers assured me that Gail knew about her mother’s secret. But I still had trepidations. How would Gail react to me telling her story? How would our viewers react to this subject? But I knew it was a story that needed to be told.
Gail showed up at Genealogy Roadshow with her family and lots of anticipation. She had no idea what I would reveal about her mother’s ancestry or how it would change her life. We were both nervous, but once we started talking our nerves subsided.
After learning more about her mother’s racial ancestry, I knew Gail would be compelled to write a book. I also knew that we would share a special bond because she took this journey with me.
White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the culmination of that journey. This book adds to the ongoing conversation about race and racial identity in America because it looks at the ramifications of institutionalized racialism and racial passing through one family’s story—the Frederic family—a multiracial family with deep roots in Louisiana.
Passing is something we don’t talk about in our society, but in the African American community we know it exists. It’s part of our collective history as Americans. I would guess that most Americans, especially those of the younger generation, have never heard these terms. The “one-drop” rule is on
e of the many reasons that Gail’s mother and many African Americans choose to pass for white. Passing meant better opportunities for jobs, education, and quality of life. According to statistics, between 1880 and 1925 approximately twelve thousand blacks “crossed the color line” each year in hope for a better life.1 Considering those statistics, I would also guess that many Americans, like Gail, have benefitted from an ancestor who “crossed the color line” to hide their racial identity and have no idea of their mixed racial heritage.
In A Chosen Exile by Allyson Hobbs, the first chapter is titled “White Is the Color of Freedom.” If you think about it, that idea has been true since slavery began in America and is still true. Racism and the continued oppression of African Americans exist today. So, imagine yourself born in Louisiana with white skin and multiracial ancestry but classified as black because of the one-drop rule. You would face discrimination, low or no education, and dim job opportunities. What would you do? Would you choose to leave your family behind? These are the questions that White Like Her raises that will help us as a nation continue the discussion about racial identity. In her exploration of racial identity, Gail points out that not all African Americans who could pass for white did, adding another dimension to the racial discourse.
The book also tells the Frederic family’s story, which is important in helping us understand America’s complex racial history. This family’s genealogy exposes the various sexual relationships between white men, free people of color, female slaves, and white women. By giving the historical background connected to each generation, the book shows that while the roles were firmly defined, the races were less defined because of blurred racial lines when it came to their offspring. White men had children with free women of color and slaves. The status of the child was dependent upon the status of the mother. In Louisiana, this created a social system where free people of color were a step above slaves but below the poorest white farmer.
But White Like Her is not just about genealogy. It also explores the social and cultural history of Louisiana, rich with African, French, and Spanish heritage. Racial classifications such as quadroon (one-quarter) and octoroon (one-eighth) were often used to describe the offspring of white planters and women of African and European descent. This created the multi-racial ancestry that most African Americans have today. The Frederic family is an example of those blurred lines of black, white, free people of color, master, and slave.
As a professional genealogist and host on Genealogy Roadshow, I celebrate the uniqueness of Gail’s personal journey of discovery and her willingness to share it. In learning to forgive and understand her mother and her choices, Gail lets go of the judgment and tries to imagine how hard it must have been for her mother to pass for white. Along the way she is able to embrace her heritage and discover what it truly means to be a family. Most people want a connection to their ancestor or are trying to solve a family mystery. Sometimes when you start this journey it leads you down an unexpected road.
One incident in White Like Her that really stood out for me was the moment when Gail discovered her maternal grandfather, Azemar Frederic, listed as “B” on a census record. Uncertain and shocked, she approached a volunteer to get clarification on this designation. The woman stated that “B” meant black. She also made racially insensitive jokes to Gail, and this was in the 1990s. The woman had no idea that this was Gail’s grandfather.
I realized that this is what her mother went through every day of her life when she made the decision to pass, enduring the jokes and having to smile as if she agreed or brushing them aside. Her mother must have been hurt because they were talking about her parents, grandparents, and her. I cannot even imagine the sadness she endured. I am sure Gail’s mother would have never thought her curious daughter would be enduring this pain and sadness in her quest to discover her mother’s ancestors.
It was fascinating to me to get the backstory and to understand Gail’s personal struggles before she came on the show. With each document or explanation, it left her more confused and conflicted about the one-drop rule. What did that mean to her and her family’s identity? Yet, she still chose to come on Genealogy Roadshow and reveal her family’s secret to America.
I am very fond of Gail, and I think she is extremely brave to go on Genealogy Roadshow and reveal her family story—a story that was shared by many but often kept to themselves. Gail and I hit it off instantly and as her story unfolded, I could tell that she was thinking of her mother and her childhood. I could see it in her eyes. It was as if her mother’s peculiar behaviors, such as meticulously applying face makeup to cover her olive complexion and avoiding the sun, were being examined.
After Gail’s story aired, I remember being at the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City. A white man came up to me and he almost started crying. He couldn’t understand why Gail’s mother had to pass for white. He knew why, but the story touched him so much, he just said, “It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right.”
That was the goal of sharing Gail’s story and her mother’s journey—to open up a dialogue, to get whites and blacks talking about slavery and Jim Crow.
White Like Her adds to that dialogue by exploring the trials and tribulations of a mixed-race family and, more importantly, the impact of racial identity. This book will be the impetus to conversations about periods in history that have been forgotten but still resonate in people’s lives today whether they know it or not. Some too painful to remember, but we know “it wasn’t right.”
1
PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow Season Two Taping
August 2014, St. Louis, Missouri
WILD WITH ANTICIPATION, I hurry up the granite steps of the St. Louis Central Public Library, oblivious to the blistering heat and humidity. A family secret I’ve kept for seventeen years is about to be exposed in the most public way possible—on a national television show, Genealogy Roadshow. Although I’m a published mystery author, I’ve never been able to solve this mystery with any certainty. Today it will be solved.
Already there’s a queue of people on the left waiting to enter the imposing library for the show’s taping. La Monte Westmoreland, one of the producers, instructed me to bypass the line. “If you have any problems, call me on my cellphone.”
Tucked in my purse are his cellphone number and my notes from the Skype interview with Rachel from casting in California. Last night, unable to sleep, I rehearsed my questions for the genealogist, reciting them over and over as if they were an incantation that could conjure my mysterious, elusive grandfather, Azemar Frederic of New Orleans. He and his ancestors hold the key to my racial identity that was deeply buried by my mother, Alvera Frederic Kalina.
As I reach the top step I spot the film crew on the right, lugging their equipment inside the library. Before I can follow them, Sarah Hochhauser, the Assistant Producer, appears. In her lovely Welsh accent, she tells me that she’ll be doing a short interview prior to the taping and then another interview after the taping to get my reaction to the revelations.
“Do you know what the genealogist found out about my grandfather?” I ask Sarah, adrenaline spiking through me at the thought of multiple interviews.
“No, I don’t,” she answers. “You’ll have to tell me your reaction to the revelations in the post interview. That makes all the interviews more spontaneous for both of us.”
Does she really not know? I study her face, which is impossible to read.
As we walk inside, a million thoughts and emotions spark through me, from curiosity about what they discovered to anxiety about whether I should have ever agreed to do this. From the moment I completed the online application to learning my story was chosen for the show, I’ve struggled with doubt. Am I honoring the vow I made to my mother so long ago to keep her secret, or am I dishonoring it? Though I know it’s too late for second thoughts, still they won’t leave me, nagging at me with a daughter’s worry. Even now, four months after my mother’s death, I want to protect her. From what, I’m not sure.
>
“You’ll be fine,” Sarah says, patting my shoulder. And then she’s gone, hurrying toward the Great Hall, where the filming will take place.
My family joins me. They’ve been waiting patiently for me to finish my conversation with Sarah. Today’s revelations affect them as well. My husband, Jerry; our son, Chris; daughter, Lauren; daughter-in-law, Charlyne; and our two granddaughters, Ainsley and Quincy, and I walk toward the Great Hall. We stand on the threshold silently watching.
Everything is unreal from the crew setting up cameras and lights to the large screen that will show our family’s history to the table where Jerry and I will sit and listen to Kenyatta Berry, one of Roadshow’s genealogists. The air is palpable with excitement and energy.
I let it all wash over me, thinking back to that chilly winter day nearly twenty years ago when I uncovered a family secret in a Family History Center in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. The day that I found out I wasn’t who I thought I was. That everything I knew about myself wasn’t everything. That a crucial part of my mother’s family history had been hidden from me.
The producer tells us it’s time. My husband and I follow him into the room and take our places. Across from us sits Kenyatta, who’s dressed in a crisp white suit that contrasts with her warm brown skin. Behind us stands our family who surrounds us like an embrace.
My breath catches as I glance at the script that rests beside the laptop computer Kenyatta will use to display the key documents of my mother’s story. It’s thick with secrets.
The director calls for silence. The Great Hall goes quiet and the three cameras start to roll. Kenyatta smiles knowingly at me and says, “Your mother had a secret she was determined to take to the grave.”
I nod, realizing the trueness of her words, and how my mother’s death freed me from my vow, and how if it weren’t for my persistent curiosity, she would have taken her secret to her grave.