How a single decision made a century ago split a family in half by race

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Today, a story about how American racism tore a family apart and how Pope Leo XIV was the catalyst for bringing them together. Last spring, when the news broke that the newly-elected pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, journalist Susan Saulny 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 a shade lighter. Enough to leave for Chicago in the early 1920s, remake himself as a white man and never come back. Susan grew up with just one picture of him. A young man, barely 19, propped on her grandfather's China cabinet. Five words in Creole did all the work of explaining - Edward, passe blanc, white passing. A century later, Susan set out to find the white family Edward built in Chicago and to see whether what racism had broken could be put back together. Her piece in The New York Times is called "A Family Secret No More." Susan Saulny, welcome to FRESH AIR. SUSAN SAULNY: Oh, thank you. And it's a pleasure to be here. MOSLEY: Take me to the moment you saw the headline about the new pope. SAULNY: I was at home in Washington, D.C., and I saw this news. And, like, a lot of America, I was stunned. And I'm in touch with a lot of people in New Orleans over different social media channels or text threads. …