It was a fall day in Chicago, and the former National correspondent Susan Saulny had arranged to talk to three women about something that, in the best-case scenario, would be uncomfortable or, at worst, combustible. The three women were Midwestern and white, and Saulny is Southern and Black. She intended to tell them that their grandfather had been with hers in the 1910s as children at the Lafon Orphan Asylum for Colored Boys, a bygone institution in New Orleans. They were brothers: George and Edward DeGrange. And they were Black. The two young men faced a bleak existence together until one day in the early 1920s, when Edward boarded a train to Chicago. Upon arrival, he presented himself as white. Edward eventually married and had children in Chicago — white children — who had children. George, too dark to pass even if he had wanted to, chose to stay behind. He eventually married and had children in New Orleans — Black children — who had children.
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