From White to Black: The Story of a Black Family that Started off White

Where did I come from? Who were my grandparents and my great-grandparents? Where did they come from? My inner city friends in Los Angeles had been instructing me for years to “get back to my roots.” I was finally going to take their advice. In “From White to Black,” author, Tracy Lewis tells the story of her family, who had been White for over 100 years until they, along with thousands of other mixed-race and white families were reclassified as Negro. In 1924, Walter Plecker directed offices under his authority to change vital statistic records and reclassify thousands of mulattoes (persons with mixed-race ancestry) as Negro without their consent and without notifying them. Plecker was convinced that mulatto offspring were slowly contaminating the White race and referred to mulattos as rats that needed to be stopped. Soon after, in 1930, the U.S. Census Bureau dropped the longstanding racial classification of mulatto from the list of racial classifications. Plecker’s work on racial purity was praised by Adolf Hitler, who congratulated Plecker for being the first person to “get it right”. The belief that “one drop of Black blood made one Black and only Black” was a lie created by Aryan White Supremacists...And sadly, their teaching still resonates in the minds of people, most of whom have never even heard of the one-drop rule. In “From White to Black” Lewis examines the reasoning behind the one-drop rule and the idea of racial-purity as she shines a revealing light on racial classification, skin color prejudice, and racism in the 21st century. I was getting ready to go out the door to work when the phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it, but something told me to pick up the phone. When I did, the voice on the other end said, ‘Hello, Louise, this is Alex Haley.’ I was shocked! —Louise “Bunch” King