AI Summary
5 min readJournalist Susan Solney grew up in a Black family in New Orleans knowing one piece of family lore: a great-uncle had boarded a train to Chicago a century earlier and never returned. The only explanation was a single word written on the back of an old photograph: passé blanc — white passing. When news broke in 2025 that the newly elected Pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, Solney recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it. Her grandfather George was a Black bricklayer who raised his children in New Orleans. His brother Edward was Black too, but light enough to leave for Chicago in the early 1920s and remake himself as a white man, severing all ties. A century later, Solney set out to find the white family Edward built in Chicago, and to see whether what racism had broken could be put back together.
The Family That Was Split in Two
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:24) **Introduction to the Episode** - Tanya Mosley introduces two conversations about race in America: Susan Solney’s family secret and Eddie Glaude Jr.’s look at America’s anniversaries.
- 2 (03:02) **Susan Solney: The Pope’s Headline Triggers a Family Search** - Solney recognized the story of the Pope’s Creole roots and family move to Chicago because her own great-uncle, Edward, had done the same thing a century earlier.
- 3 (06:36) **Tracing the Family’s Roots: A Wine Merchant and a Confederate Colonel** - Solney goes back to an ancestor, a French wine merchant who arrived in New Orleans in 1834, enslaved people, and whose son fought for the Confederacy.
- 4 (09:00) **The Relationship of Ned and Minerva** - Ned and Minerva’s relationship was surprisingly public; he didn’t hide their children and brought them to cultural events.
- 5 (11:41) **The Trauma of the Orphanage** - The children were sent to the “Lafon Orphan Asylum for Colored Boys,” a grim institution, after their mother’s death.
- 6 (14:53) **The Chicago Reunion: Meeting the White Cousins** - Solney, nervous and carrying notes, meets Edward’s descendants in Chicago. They immediately recognized each other as family.
- 7 (17:08) **The Psychological Toll of Passing** - Solney aimed to show the lived experience and psychological cost of passing on both sides of the family.
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Show Notes
As the United States turns 250, scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. has blunt advice: “America has to grow up.” In ‘America, U.S.A.,’ the Princeton African American Studies professor looks at the country through the lens of its previous anniversaries and centennials. "The divided soul of the nation is in full view," he says.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan shares three book recommendations: ‘The Family Man,’ by James Lasdun, ‘The Hill,’ by Harriet Clark and ‘A Beautiful Loan,’ by Mary Costello.
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