# How a Century-Old Choice Created a Racial Divide Within One Family
Journalist Susan Saulny embarked on a personal investigation that revealed how one family decision nearly a century ago fractured her lineage along racial lines. Her research centered on a Creole great-uncle who left New Orleans for Chicago and chose to live as a white man, severing ties with his Black family entirely.
Saulny's journey began with curiosity about her family's mixed-race heritage and Pope Leo's Black roots. She traced her great-uncle's path northward during the Great Migration, a period when millions of Black Americans relocated from the South seeking economic opportunity and escape from Jim Crow segregation. Her relative's choice to pass as white in Chicago represented a drastic departure from his identity and family bonds.
The investigation uncovered painful truths about racial identity, family loyalty, and survival during a deeply segregated America. Passing, the practice of people of mixed or Black heritage presenting themselves as white, allowed some individuals legal and social privileges unavailable to Black Americans. Yet it came at an enormous cost, severing family relationships that could never fully heal.
Saulny's work documents the emotional weight of this century-old decision. Her great-uncle built a completely separate life in Chicago, never returning to New Orleans and maintaining no contact with relatives who remained. The family split reflected the brutal arithmetic of American racism. one person's choice to claim whiteness meant abandoning Blackness, and with it, the family that couldn't or wouldn't make the same choice.
Her reporting explores themes of passing, identity, and the impossible choices people faced under segregation. Saulny's effort to reconnect these fractured branches of her family illustrates how personal histories intertwine with American racial history. A single decision, made quietly over a century ago, created a chasm that shaped generations.
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