White Like Her
Page 28
Then he tells me another story of accidental passing. “When I was processed into the air force, I had to submit my high school records and on the record for race was C for colored. The person who processed me changed my race to white. He must have thought there’d been a mistake but he never said anything. I didn’t know it at the time. But I found out later. So I used it to my advantage in the service because I thought it would help with my promotions.”
When I ask him about his father’s other family, he says, “I never knew my father had another family. He used to take me to visit this lady on Galvez Street. I didn’t know who she was. Her name was Shirley that was all I knew.”
This was my mother’s sister, Shirley. He was visiting his half sister and was never told that they were family.
It seems incredible that my grandfather never told Fred that this lady on Galvez was his half sister. And just as incredible that Shirley never said a word either.
How easily family falls away from each other, I think.
“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
“I think your book is going to open up a lot of people’s eyes.”
37
Union Station, Los Angeles, California
Genealogy Roadshow Redux: January 15, 2016
THE MIKE GUY hands me a wire and asks me to thread it inside my blouse while a commotion of tech people ready the set for the taping. As I thread the wire, I listen to La Monte Westmoreland give Kenyatta and me instructions for the taping. He’s his usual unflappable self, warm, friendly, and professional.
“Kenyatta, start by asking Gail what’s happened since she’s been on the show. We’ll use footage from her segment as a lead-in.”
I sigh, relieved I don’t have to recite the story of my mother’s racial secret and my seventeen-year vow to keep that secret. Though I’m prepared to do so.
Kenyatta says, “Got it.”
About a month ago, La Monte contacted me and asked if I’d like to fly to Los Angeles to do an update for the show. Of course I said yes. He explained that the three Genealogy Roadshow genealogists—Kenyatta Berry, Joshua Taylor, and Mary Tedesco—were asked which story had the most impact on them personally, and Kenyatta chose our story. But I don’t know why. Maybe during the interview she’ll reveal her reason.
“Just pretend we’re having a conversation, just you and me,” Kenyatta advises me.
“Pretty hard to do with the cameras.”
“Okay, we’re ready to go,” shouts the bearded guy with the baseball cap whose name I can’t remember.
Kenyatta and I exchange a knowing smile, and she says, “Gail, we’re happy to have you back.”
“Thank you. I’m happy to be back.”
“So what’s happened since the show aired?”
“Three days after the show aired,” I begin, “I received an email from Stephanie Frederic welcoming me to the family. She tells me her father is Azemar Frederic, Jr. He’s my mother’s half brother.”
The words tumble out as images flash through my mind—images of family my mother left behind, turned her back on, let go of. I see them lined up to greet me as I walked through the doors of the Event Room. I see us on the ferry to Ship Island as the boat rocked and someone steadied the camera to capture this blended family, who visually tell the story of racial identity in America. I see my mother’s shotgun house on St. Ann Street where she was born and the black marble of Philomene Lanabere Frederic’s crypt in St. Louis No. One Cemetery. I see Stephanie Frederic sitting across the table from me at a restaurant last night after having flown from Atlanta, Georgia, to take her new cousin to dinner. Then flying back to Atlanta at midnight.
Someone says, “Stop.”
I’m frustrated that I may lose the thread of my story, the momentum that was building. He apologizes and explains that we have to wait until the next train is announced over the loudspeaker.
While waiting, I glance to my right and watch a young woman walk slowly through the station and think of my mother walking through this very station in 1943, eager to test the waters of passing in California. Is she with me here now? Is she thinking, finally my story will be heard? Finally I will be given a voice and people will know who I was, who I really was and what I had to do to escape racism.
La Monte walks over. “Kenyatta, why don’t you tell Gail why you chose her story?” She nods, straightens her back, and rests her hands on the table taking in a long breath, as she gathers her thoughts.
We start filming again. “Gail, I was very moved by your story. I think you were incredibly brave to tell it on national television. You’ve lived your life as a white woman. That’s how your friends and your community viewed you. You had no idea how people would react. It was also brave to keep the secret for so long to honor your mother’s wishes. I thought it was very touching that you weren’t angry with your mother.”
I squirm under her praise. “Thank you,” I respond, not sure if she’ll like what I want to say about bravery. “But I think my mother was the brave one.” It’s not false modesty. It’s really how I feel. “She made the audacious move to come north and pass as white. She did that for her children so we could have a better life.”
“I think you mentioned how she hid from the sun, wore hats whenever she went outside,” Kenyatta coaxes.
“She did. She never went outside without a hat.” And she did so much more to protect herself from being found out.
“There was always the fear for her of being outed, of having someone from her hometown recognize her. And then having to leave her family in New Orleans behind to cross over,” Kenyatta adds.
She gets it. She understands what it means to leave family, to reinvent yourself.
“With all that’s happened this past year how has it changed you?”
The question throws me. In preparing for this interview, that question never occurred to me. I stumble for an answer and even as I say it, it comes up short.
“I have a deeper understanding for what my mother went through. I see myself differently.”
“How do you see yourself differently?” Kenyatta asks.
How can I explain the way I view race and myself now? Not that I was ever a racist, but that I can see deeper into our racial history, how it’s a social construct with consequences. From Luison Santilly, the enslaved Native American, to my mother Alvera Frederic Kalina who was enslaved by Jim Crow laws and all the Frederics in between, moving back and forth across the color line, making decisions that impacted their children’s lives. Except for Asian, the Frederic ancestors have checked every racial box.
I’m not sure how I answer her. There’s too much to say. It would take a much longer time to explain the journey that has brought me here.
The interview ends. Kenyatta and I hug. I walk back to the holding area where the other two Genealogy Roadshow alums and my husband are waiting. It’s been a good day. I watch the light from the palladium windows dance across the art deco marble floor. I hear the announcement of the arrival of another train.
I think of my mother carefully relating her New Orleans stories to me in the small bedroom in Parma, how she gave me the gift of her life story, to sift through, to bear witness to, to interpret, and then to tell what she could not tell, dare not tell, the true story of her life in all its shadings and shadows and half-truths and deceptions. Preparing me to be the daughter she wanted me to be: secret keeper and storyteller.
Acknowledgments
I WANT TO offer my heartfelt thanks to those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during the writing of White Like Her. Their contributions were invaluable.
I’m indebted to my savvy and intelligent readers, who I’m fortunate to call my friends: Professor Nancy Cirillo, University of Illinois, Chicago; Professor Hanley Kanar, Illinois Institute of Art; and Professor Linda Landis Andrews, University of Illinois, Chicago. Thanks to journalist and friend, Mary Aiello Gauntner, who kept my spirits from flagging and contributed to the Civil War research.
I am grateful to these generous researchers and genealogists: Genealogy Librarian Sonia Schoenfield, Cook Memorial Library; Genealogy Librarian Ellen Jenkins Jennings, Cook Memorial Library; Genealogist Rich Venezia, Genealogist Judy Riffel; Librarian and Archivist Jeanne Thomas; Researcher Abby Grace Iona Djama-Adan; Archivist Jack Belsom, Archdiocese of New Orleans Office of Archives and Records; Head Librarian Becky Hill, Rutherford B. Hayes Library; Jessica Strawn, Parish of Orleans Civil District Court; Military Historian Isiah Edwards; Librarian and Archivist Gregory Osborn, New Orleans Public Library; and Head Librarian Christina Bryant, New Orleans Public Library.
Without Genealogy Roadshow this book probably would have never been written. I owe special thanks to the Genealogy Roadshow family, especially Senior Producer LaMonte Westmoreland, Field Producer Sarah Hochhauser, Executive Producer Carlos Ortiz, Executive Producer Stuart Krasnow, and host Kenyatta Berry who understood the importance of my mother’s story and offered me support and guidance.
White Like Her is a story of family, both lost and found. I would like to thank the entire Frederic family for their unflinching and warm welcome and for entrusting me with the Frederic family story. I’d especially like to thank Ula Moret, Alma Montgomery, Azemar Frederic, Paula Danners, Versie Jeffries, and Paris L. Gill Smith for sharing their personal stories. I’m particularly grateful to Stephanie Frederic for her encouragement, enthusiasm, and generous spirit. She has been a guiding light throughout the writing of the book.
Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my son, Professor Christopher Lukasik, Purdue University, who deserves special recognition for his genealogical research into the family tree, and to my husband, Jerry Lukasik, whose diligence and patience solved the mystery of Ursin’s paternity and whose belief in me has kept me steadfast in this journey of amazing discoveries.
Notes
Foreword
1.
Michelle Gordon Jackson, Light, Bright and Damn Near White: Black Leaders Created by the One-Drop Rule, (JacksonScribe Publishing Company, 2013), 18.
5: The Vow
1.
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1995), 90.
6: Creole, Anyone?
1.
Mary Gehman, The Free People of Color: An Introduction (Louisiana: Margaret Mead, Inc., 2014), 77.
2.
The Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980).
3.
Louisiana Revised Statues, title 42, sec. 267.
4.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 100.
10: Difficult Beginnings
1.
Edna B. Freiberg, Bayou St. John in Colonial Louisiana 1699–1803 (New Orleans: Harvey Press, 1980), 277–279.
2.
Cornell University Law School: Legal Information Institute.
3.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
4.
Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2014), 129.
5.
Hobbs, A Chosen Exile, 128.
6.
1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity.
7.
Mixed Race Studies: Scholarly Perspectives on the Mixed Race Experience.
11: Nothing Left to Lose
1.
Hobbs, A Chosen Exile, 15, 18.
13: The Case of the Disappearance of Aunt Laura
1.
Arthé A. Anthony, “Lost Boundaries,” Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color, ed. Sybil Kein (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 301–302.
2.
Anthony, “Lost Boundaries,” 303.
14: Gens de Couleur Libre
1.
“Free People of Color in Louisiana,” LSU Libraries, October 2015, www.lib.lsu.edu/special/fpoc/history.html.
2.
Joan Martin, “Plaçage and the Louisiana Gens de Couleur Libre.” Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color, ed. Sybil Kein (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 57.
3.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 11.
4.
Kimberly S. Hanger, “Coping in a Complex World: Free Black Women in Colonial New Orleans,” in The Devil’s Lane, ed. Clinton and Gillespie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 220.
5.
Martin, “Plaçage,” 68.
6.
Hellen Lee-Keller, “Placage,” in knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, ed. David Johnson, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, article published 2 Feb 2011, http://www.knowla.org/entry/764/.
7.
Martin, “Plaçage,” 62.
8.
Martin, “Plaçage,” 62.
9.
Martin, “Plaçage,” 64–65.
10.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 2.
15: Leon Frederic, Light Enough to Fight
1.
Mary F. Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The Louisiana Native Guards, 1861–1863,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association Spring 1967, 165–90.
2.
James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1998), 16.
3.
Butler to Stanton, August 14, 1862, OR, Vol. XV, 548–49.
4.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 13.
5.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 16.
6.
Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray,” 165–90.
7.
Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray.”
8.
Butler to Stanton, May 25, 1862, OR, Vol. XV, 442.
9.
Hobbs, A Chosen Exile.
10.
New Orleans Daily Picayune, May 27, 1863.
11.
Joseph T. Wilson, Black Phalanx, 195.
12.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 21.
13.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 40–42.
14.
Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray,” 178.
15.
Berry, “Negro Troops in Blue and Gray,” 181.
16.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 46.
17.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 48, 51.
18.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 53.
19.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 54.
20.
The Walter Stephens Turner Diary: 39th Mississippi Infantry, May–July 1863.
21.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 56.
22.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 58.
23.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 57.
24.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 59–60.
25.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 100–101.
26.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 101, 102.
27.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 106.
28.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 106, 107.
29.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 91.
30.
Hollandsworth, Louisiana Native Guards, 107.
31.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 92.
32.
R. C. Hitchcock to George Washington Cable, September 1, 1888, quoted in Somers, “Black and White in New Orleans,” 42.
33.
Anthony, “Lost Boundaries,” 301.
34.
Anthony, “Lost Boundaries,” 303.
16: The Vagaries of War
1.
Ned Hemard, “New Orleans Nostalgia: Minit Made,” New Orleans Bar Association: New Orleans Nostalgia, Remembering New Orleans History, Culture and Traditions, 2013, accessed September 2015, www.neworleansbar.org/uploads/files/Minit%20Made%202–27.pdf
2.
Stephen Ambrose, “Advance to Buna-The 32D ‘Red Arrow’ Infantry Division in World War II The ‘Red Arrow,’” 2014, accessed August 2015, http://www.32nd-division.org/history/ww2/32ww2-2.html
3.
Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004).
17: California Dreaming
1.
Shmoop Editorial Team, Economy in World War II: Home Front, 11 November 2008, accessed 22 April 2016, http://www.shmoop.com/wwii-home-front/economy.html.
2.
Gehman, The Free People of Color, 311.
3.
Hobbs, A Chosen Exile, 113.
18: Antebellum Love and Sex: The Cabinetmaker and the French Grocer
1.
John Hanno Deiler, The Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana and the Creoles of German Descent(Philadelphia: Americana Press, 1909, 2004).