Her Mother Passed as White. The Truth Stayed Hidden for Decades

What happens when a family secret rewrites your identity?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall welcome author Gail Lukasik, whose work explores the powerful impact of hidden family histories and DNA discoveries.

Gail reads a moving excerpt from her book What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed, inspired by the flood of personal stories she received after sharing her own family revelation. At the Untangling Our Roots Summit, one stranger approached her with a brand-new DNA shock. The man who raised her was not her biological father.

Gail knows this journey firsthand. While researching her family history in 1995, she uncovered documents revealing that her mother had been passing as white despite having African ancestry. For 17 years she kept the secret at her mother’s request. After her mother’s death, Gail told the story in her memoir White Like Her, which eventually led her to reconnect with relatives in New Orleans she never knew existed.

In this conversation, Gail shares why strangers trust her with their deepest family secrets and why storytelling can help people rebuild their sense of identity after a life-changing discovery.

If you have ever wondered how DNA surprises reshape identity, family, and belonging, this episode will resonate.

About Gail Lukasik

Gail Lukasik is an award-winning author and genealogist. Her memoir White Like Her chronicles her discovery that her mother had been passing as white despite having African ancestry. Her follow-up book, What They Never Told Us, shares true stories of people uncovering hidden family identities through genealogy and DNA testing.

Transcript

Family Secrets, DNA Discoveries, and Hidden Identities

Kendall 0:00

Welcome back to Family Twist. I'm Kendall. This episode hits right at the intersection of what we talk about all the time: family secrets, identity, and what happens when the truth finally has room to breathe. Today we're joined by Corey and author Gail Lucasik. And if Gail's name sounds familiar, there's a reason. Her memoir, White Like Her, blew open her family's history of racial passing, and what came after was something she never expected. An avalanche of strangers reaching out to share their own secrets. That experience became her follow-up book, What They Never Told Us. A collection of true stories about hidden identities, racial discovery, adoption, and donor conception. The kinds of truths that change how you see your past and sometimes how you see yourself. In this conversation, Gail reads an excerpt from the final chapter, a moment at the very first Untangling Our Roots summit, where a woman walks up to her table and says, basically, You're the reason I came. And what follows is raw, immediate, and painfully familiar to anyone who's ever had their life rearranged by a DNA result. We also talk about the long shadow of secrecy, what it costs to keep a truth inside for years, and what it takes to rebuild identity when the story you lived with turns out to be incomplete. So settle in. Here's Corey with Gail Lucasek.

The Story Behind What They Never Told Us and Why Strangers Share Their Secrets

Corey 1:30

Hello, Gail. Welcome to the Family Twist Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Hi, nice to be here.

Corey 1:35

We're excited to have you. And thought it'd be a nice way to kick off the episode with you giving us a little bit of background on your book and then reading an excerpt of it.

When Someone Learns “My Dad Isn’t My Dad” From a DNA Test

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I can give you some background first, and then I'll read the excerpt. My book is What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed. And it's the follow-up book to my memoir, White Like Her, My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing. And what happened after White Like Her came out, uh, I wrote an article for the Washington Post, and that led to my being on the Today Show. Once I was on the Today Show, I started receiving an avalanche of emails through my website, people wanting to share their own stories of racial passing or sometimes just family secrets that they have not been able to talk about with their family. So here I am, a stranger, getting all these family secrets coming my way. So it took a few years for me to kind of take it all in. And then when I started thinking about writing my next nonfiction book, I thought, you know what? I think it's time to tell other people's stories of family secrets. And so that's how what they never told us came about. So you have been so kind to let me read an excerpt. And I'm going to read an excerpt actually from the very last chapter in the book. It's called Strangers Keep Telling Me Their Secrets. This incident happened. I was attending, I believe it was the first summit called Untangling Our Roots. It was a pretty big deal. It brought together adoptees, donor conceive people, and non-parental event people. So they were all at this summit. So it's the first day of the summit, and as an author, you get an author table. So I'm sitting at the author table for about an hour or so, and then I'm thinking, eh, it's about time to pack up. And then this is what happened. Suddenly, as I'm packing up, a woman is standing in front of my table. Maybe in her mid-thirties, though I'm a terrible judge of age. Brown hair, casually dress. There's an edge to her. Her lanyard is twisted, so I can't see her name or what state she's from. You're the reason I came, she says emphatically. I wasn't going to come, but I saw your name, and I drove here from central Illinois. From the intensity of her gaze, the way she leans in, her hand resting on one of my books, I sense she desperately wants to tell me something. I'm both pleased but wary. My mother's story sometimes elicits unexpected emotional reaction from people. She gathers her thoughts. I wait. Then she looks at me and begins to tell me the first story. Two weeks ago, I got a DNA result. Shocker. My dad's not my dad. I asked my mom about it. At first she wouldn't tell me. Then she did. It happened while she was separated from my dad. She had an affair with this guy she knew. She thought she couldn't get pregnant. I guess she was wrong. I'm just glad my dad's no longer here. Do you know who your birth father is? I asked. After almost two years of interviewing people who've had these recoveries, the question comes easily. She scoffs. It's a small town. I know who he is. As soon as I found out, I marched over to her house, knocked on his door, and told him I was his daughter. He told me to leave. End of story. Her mouth is tight with anger and hurt. I'm sorry, I say. Of all the people's stories and incredible discoveries I've listened to, none of them were so recent and so wrong. Look, I'm a businesswoman. I run my own travel agency. It will work for me. I can handle this. She pauses. I'm not sure if I'm gonna stay. I just wanted to meet you. You might want to stick around and check out some of the panels I offer, believing that the panels might help her. I don't know. Thinks anyway. It's the second day of the summit late in the afternoon. There's a line of people waiting to buy my book. Probably because they attended my author panel. The line starts to dwindle. I look up after signing a copy of my book and see the woman from yesterday. She waits until everyone leaves. I thought I could handle this, but I can't. She starts to cry. I hold her hand while she breathes. There's nothing else I can do except to say, it's good that you stayed. From my own discovery experience and from listening to others with similar experiences, I know the difficult journey that lies ahead for her. She begins putting the pieces of her identity back together. As I hand her my card, I tell her to email me if she wants to talk. I never hear from her again. When I think about the stories in this book and the bravery of the people sharing them, I think about what the novelist Sigrid Nunes said at the end of her novel, The Friend. What we missed, what we lost, and what we mourn. Isn't this what makes us who deep down we truly are? From these splintered pieces of who we once thought we were.

Corey 7:44

It's very touching, and it's what I find so remarkable, and I'll speak for Kendall too, is that you know, like you, we started this podcast telling Kendall's story, and then we quickly shifted into telling other people's stories. And I'm still we're honored that, as you said, strangers are coming forward with us and telling us their secrets. And we don't like to know too much before going in because we want the conversation to be real and organic, and we want to be right there with the audience as we have those pearl-clutching moments, right? Yes, yes, for sure. And it was literally five minutes before we got on this recording, got a message on our podcast webpage just saying, I'm binging the podcast. I just had my discovery, I'm 55 years old, I relate to Kendall so much, and this is a regular occurrence, you know. And so again, it's kudos to you for getting the stories out there because there are people like the woman in your book who can't handle it and don't know where to go and don't know what to do. Something like untangling our roots might be too much for somebody if they're brand new to their discovery. But I have to say, and I know I've said this on the podcast, you know, I attended two years ago, and it was a life-changing weekend for me. And I'm not the one with the discovery, it's it's Kendall. You know, I'm I'm the supportive spouse, but we've gone through this journey together every step of the way. I mean, I'm the one that bought on the DNA test.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

That is one of my hopes for the book, is that, as you said, that people maybe aren't ready to go public, but they would like some resources. They'd like to read other people's story and see how they handled it. And, you know, I have 14 stories in here. And the way I did the book was I categorized them. The first part is about race and ethnicity. People find out, discover they're not the race or ethnicity they thought they were. And then the second part is about adoption, and then the last part is about donor conception. And you know, the the interesting thing is you kind of touched on this. When I started the project, I thought, well, you know, it's not going to be that emotional for me. I have to tell you, because all my interviews were done on Zoom. And sometimes they would last two hours, and then I would realize after I transcribed them that I still had more questions. So I'd ask, can I interview you again? So, you know, sometimes I would have three hours. When you're spending that much time with a person and not only listening to their story, but transcribing it, stopping the tapes so you can watch their gesture. You know, you hit on something when they their voice changes or they make some kind of gesture. I had one man, Bruce, who he grew up in this large Irish Catholic family of 10 kids, and he looked like no one. They were all blonde, fair, blue-eyed, and he had dark eyes, darker skin, dark eyes. And he just knew he didn't fit. And every time he could go to his parents, they say something like, It's a recessive gene. Don't worry about it. So after his parents were deceased, he went and did the DNA tests. And sure enough, he found out, I don't remember the exact percentage, but I think it was close to 40% Sahara African DNA. So then he went in search of his father. So, you know, listening to his story, you can't help but empathize, somehow step into that person's shoes. Because I think that's the only way I could do justice to these stories is if I got out of the journalist's hat and put on the empathy hat. And that that happened for me. So it became a real emotional journey for me.

Corey 11:38

You're preaching to the converted. I'm I'm a journalist myself, and I have to wear both hats. I'm often I'm a crier. Kendall, you know, Kendall gets emotional too, but I'm there crying with the guests. We were talking about untangling our roots, and one of the the memories that stick out for me was the Saturday night. I was so exhausted because it's a lot. It's not only a long day, but it's very emotional, emotionally draining. And so I was gonna go to bed early, and I did, and ended up going down to the gym to like run on the treadmill thinking like that would help me be ready to sleep. And that was at like eight o'clock. And then I get stopped in the lobby, and the next thing I know it's 2:30 in the morning, and I'm holding a woman's hand as she's crying, telling her story.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

There's another story in there, Brad Ewell. Have you had Brad on your podcast?

Corey 12:23

Absolutely, yes. So I'm I'm on the board of Right to Know, and we've had actually Brad on both of our podcasts, and he is one of my favorite people.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And when I heard his story the first time, and I was going, you know, you have a personal life, right? Separate from what your work life is. So I was going through some personal things in my own life, and his story hit me so hard, especially the part where he talked about all the time that was lost because he didn't know, you know, first of all, he didn't know he was adopted, and then he didn't know who his birth parents were. And then, you know, as you know, he finds them. His mother's deceased, but his father's still living. And that's quite the story. When he said that, I had to stop the tape. I had to take a few days off. Like you said, I just couldn't do it. I had to step away. It was just much too much for me. I went back, of course, but so that's what happens.

Corey 13:24

I discovered at the summit that uh Brad and I are both really big horror movie fans, and so is Kendall. And so we share recommendations through text, but I try to remember to ask him how his dad's doing, you know, every couple of couple of months because yes, you know, they they they live in a close vicinity now, and and it's just I mean, it's and I will put the link in our our show notes, but it's a remarkable story if people haven't listened to it yet. And you know, I think it's worth listening to a second time. It's just one of those like it is Oh my goodness. As I said, you know, like the the clutching the pearls, the jaw on the table. I mean, the the things that we find out, it's I mean, it'll some of it's stranger than fiction, or it's something you'd think you'd see on TV or in the movies.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah, and I mean the the big takeaway is here's Brad. And of course, when I interviewed him, he hadn't retired yet. He's a policeman, right? And then he finds out his earth father is serving a life sentence in Angola prison. And I wrote a a story about Brad and his dad for the Washington Post right after the book came out, and then I wrote a similar story for UK's The Daily Mail. And when I pitched the story to the Washington Post, the editor said, you know, that's all great, but I think you should talk to his dad. Why don't you get his opinion on this? So that made for a fuller, fuller story. And I was able to get his father's point of view of the you know the discovery he didn't know. Obviously, he didn't know he had a son and and all of that. The other interesting thing is when that article appeared in the Washington Post, you know, there's a comment section. So it was like it was pretty good, but when it appeared in the UK's Daily Mail, you have no idea how brutal some of the comments were. Really? Oh, yeah. Criticizing Brad. How could you know, criticizing him for getting his father out of prison, criticizing you not giving your adopted parents enough credit? And and I I gotta give Brad credit. He answered every single person in a very professional way. And I, and because he and I were in contact at that time. I said, I just is terrible. I can't believe people are saying these things. And he just he handled it.

Corey 15:32

He's gonna be speaking at the summit about that, about how to handle the online, you know, criticism. Fortunately, you know, Canel and I have been able to sort of avoid that. But that was one of the really surprising things when I was there a couple of years ago because I was on a panel with other podcasters. You know, the pushback that people get. Now, you know, we we like to make this a safe space for everyone's story. And, you know, we'll we'll pop up with an opinion here or there, but pretty much it's it's your you know, it's your story, it's your truth. As the podcast continues to grow and reach, we're I'm sure we're gonna be dealing with some of that at some point. So I'll definitely be attending Brad's panel and and leaning on him when that happens.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah. I haven't received any blow back at all. But, you know, it doesn't mean I won't, which is whatever.

A Genealogy Search That Uncovered a Hidden Racial Identity

Corey 16:20

Now, are you going to attend next month? Can we go back a little bit, Dale? As I mentioned, you know, we don't like to know too much going in. So let's talk a little bit about your first book and what inspired it and the revelations that that you got to bring you to that point.

Reuniting With Family After a DNA Discovery in New Orleans

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Talk about a shocker. Okay. And we have to go way back because I made my discovery in 1995, which is, as you know, 1995, there's no ancestry, there's very little internet. So I decided I was between teaching jobs, and I decided I want to do a little research on my mother's father, Ozima Frederick from New Orleans. My mother's from New Orleans. And every time I would ask her about her father, I would get these vague answers about, well, you know, they were divorced when I was six. I really can't tell you much. She didn't know when he was born, when he died, nothing other than New Orleans. Of course, where do we go? First, census records. So I went to my local family history center and started searching census records. I finally find him. 1900 census records. There's Azima Frederick. He's about two or three years old. And I noticed something strange. He's with his whole family, the Fredericks. And after all their names, there's a letter B. So I trace that up to the head of the column and it says race. So I sit there and I go, hmm, does that mean black? So I went to the woman who was helping us with the microfilm and all that stuff. And I said, you know, is this what I think this says? This means black? Well, the strangest thing happened. She goes, she confirms it, and then she just lets out all these racial slurs, referring to a type of candy letter N. And I'm looking at her like I have no idea what she's talking about. And then she looks at me and she says, Oh, you're the one with all the slaves in your family. Now you have to remember, I walked in that place, a white woman. And suddenly this woman is saying all these things to me. So I got out of there really quickly. I don't know what's happening. My mother, I grew up in Ohio, so my mother lives in the Cleveland area. I didn't contact my mother right away because my father had a very serious illness and he was dying. So it wasn't the right time to do it. But I did talk to friends and my my husband, and so I was totally confused. I I is this true? Maybe it's maybe they made a mistake. And my best friend who used to work for the Tribune, Chicago Tribune, said, Well, you need more information, write to the state of Louisiana and ask for your mother's birth certificate. So I did. And sure enough, I get it back, and there's a parentheses where they put race and they put colored. Because my mother was born in 1921, so that's the term that they would have used. So then I write another letter, and I said, Would you explain to me how you interpret color? And they said, persons of African heritage. So, like I said, I didn't get a talk to my mother until after my father died, and when I did, it was two years later. At first, she denied everything. She said, I don't know what, it's not mine. And then I said, Mom, I got other documents, I'll show them to you. And then she got very quiet. And she said to me, You can never tell anyone until after I die. And I said, Can I tell my brother? And she said, No. Well. For 17 years, she lived a long life. And you want to hear the really crazy thing? Yeah. She died in April of 2014. About a month or two later, my husband sees in our local library that Genealogy Roadshow is looking for stories based in New Orleans. So I wrote to them, and I that's well how I got on the show, and they confirmed everything that I thought was true. My mother had been passing for white. She's a mixed race woman. And they traced the family all the way back to 1790s. When I wrote my book, White Like Her, I was able to trace the family back to the early 1700s in colonial Louisiana, and I found two enslaved women. And that's in the book.

Corey 21:01

I can't even fathom keeping that information inside. Were you tempted to explore just culturally, or did you just bury it?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Well, you know, ancestry did finally come out. So I did do a little exploration and I found that my well, I think it was my great, I think it was a great-great-grandfather served in the Louisiana Native Guards, which they were on the side of the Union. And he he was, you know, he was a private, but he was a hero. And when I tried to tell my mother that, because I thought, well, maybe I'll open a dialogue that way, she changed the subject. She said, How are your kids? Did not want to talk about it. So it wasn't until I was on the roadshow that I really found out, yeah, all of that was true. I found out my grandfather, I kind of knew we had a second family, but I didn't know that he had five other kids. So after the show was over, I think it was three days after it was shown. It was shown in 2015 in January. I get an email from a woman who says to me, I'm Stephanie Frederick. My father is Azima Frederick. He is your uncle and I'm your cousin. I sat at my kitchen table and I wept because all my aunts and uncles were deceased. My parents were gone. I had cousins, but they're in Ohio. I mean, I was blown away. Blown away. So yeah, I they had a big welcome back to the family party in New Orleans in April of 2015, and I got to meet the family my mother left behind. And I have to tell you, we sat at this dinner table. I sat with Uncle Fred, my two aunts, and my mother had only been gone a year and I couldn't stop staring at them. They looked just like her. It was like I was sitting with her. It was so moving. I apologize. I'm ti I'm sorry to stare, but you look like my mom. It was just unbelievable. So when she left home, she left that part of the family. She didn't really have anything to do with them. She kept in contact with her sister and her mother, who her mother was able to visit us as kids in Cleveland because my grandmother was what we call passable. That means she could pass for white. So my father never knew.

Corey 23:36

Sure, there was a time when it was it was easier to be able to keep a secret. You can't. DNA doesn't lie.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

No, not anymore. I mean, obviously I was a very curious person and went the extra yard, you know, going to the family history center. And I'm sure my mother did not appreciate that because, you know, in the census, in the 1940 census, before she married my father, she's listed as Negro. I'm trying to get these terms right. It says N for Negro. In the 1950s census, she's already married. She has me. I'm already born. She's now white. In the census, she has a W. So she crossed the color line. And back then I understand why she did it, the reason, you know, I get it. I I did get blowback on that one. I'm I was at a uh talk in Chicago, and some people took objection to what my mother did. And I was I was with another woman who's a scholar, and she said, you know, you can't blame the victim. That's not the thing to do.

Corey 24:49

Have you been able to explore your heritage and and spend more time in New Orleans after that uh reunion?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

I did do quite a bit. And the family that I didn't know, they came to this event with all kinds of photographs. I was able to talk more in depth with everyone when we were on the Today show. But it wasn't just me, it was Stephanie, my cousin, and her dad, Uncle Fred. So there were the three of us there. Stephanie and I have done quite a few things together, you know, within the first few years the book came out. Book came out in 2017. So yeah, I did. I did. But you know, the biggest thing, and I'm sure this is what your guests tell you, when you make a discovery like this, the biggest thing is trying to piece together your identity. Because for 49 years, I assumed I was a white person. And then you have, and every time, you know, because I was such a public figure, every time I did a talk, I was on a show or whatever, I can always count on one question. So now that you know, how do you identify racially? So in the beginning, I just thought, well, you know, I want to be sensitive to people who have suffered racism. And I said, Well, I'm a white woman with black heritage. So I said that for a number of years, and then after I was on the Today Show, a woman attacked me on Amazon about my book and told she said, Black people should not read this book. This woman is not giving proper due to her black heritage. So I I didn't change my mind right away. It took years for me to figure this all out. I have to tell you that. And so I don't know, I started thinking about it, and then after that, I changed the way I identified when people asked me. I I thought of it in many ways. I thought, first of all, if we do DNA, I'm 9 to 11% African heritage. If we do look at the trauma that my mother's family endured starting in the 1700s, enslavement, being mixed race, not being able to be employed, all kinds of horrible things. I carry that forward. And then I thought, you know, I'm not gonna do the white woman with mixed race heritage anymore. I'm just gonna see how mixed race woman. And if people want to question me, that's fine. I'll talk that conversation. And so when we did the SC latest census, that's how I identified.

Corey 27:32

So ours is not a political show, but we've got blatant racism thrown in our faces in this country on a daily basis now. In this climate, how do you react when somebody says something racist or you experience racism who might not know that you're mixed race?

SPEAKER_01 27:49

I have to say, no one has said anything really to me. How I react though, in terms of what I see, is different. Once I did all the research and found Marta, that is my ancestor who was enslaved. I put together her story. I had a genealogist help me because this was a lot of work. She, her enslaver, this was in the Louisiana, she had, first of all, four children by him, and then he freed her and the children, and then she went on to have a total of 13 children with him. Now we all have to know the truth that as an enslaved woman, don't tell me she had choices because I'm not gonna believe it. And when I read why he freed her, I was incensed. Something about with love and affection for the mother, or some like I I can't tell you how angry I was. And after that, it just my brain flipped, it just flipped. And when you know these racist things, we know slavery was wrong, we know all that, but when you when it's your family, it's it's different. It just feels different. That's all I can tell you. Okay, and it's intolerable, it's intolerable.

Corey 29:16

Very fair. So, Gail, the final question that we always ask on the podcast is when you were going through the discovery, or maybe when you were going through th that 17 years of being able to have it to keep this buttoned up, is there a song or a musical artist or a genre that helped you through those tough times?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Well, I don't know that there's a particular song. When I'm writing, and when I was writing Light Like Her, I listened to a lot of jazz. So it wasn't a particular song, but there it just felt like that was the right music to listen, especially from New Orleans, you know, my mother's roots. And it just felt right. And I I this is in my background, I don't know if you know this, but I was trained for many years as a classical ballerina. So music is really important to me. So a lot of times when I'm when I'm working, I I can't listen to songs that have words. I have to just have music because otherwise I get distracted. But yeah, I listen to a lot of jazz, and I like the blues too.

Corey 30:27

So we listen to pretty much every genre here, but Kendall has a particularly fondness for jazz and blues, so he'll be tickled to hear that. Oh, that's great. Well, Gail, thank you so much for not only sharing your story, but getting other stories out there. It's so important, so helpful to you know, people who are already in the community, people who are making their discoveries, people who are, you know, somewhere in the fog. The more we talk about this and the more we get it out there, the stigma, the shame, the guilt, you know, starts to wash away. So we appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

And, you know, if anyone would like to read my book, What They Never Told Us, Amazon. Just go to Amazon or any bookseller. It's there. I think it would help people throughout the journey. I just think it's, you know, we're we work in community best. So to hear others really is helpful. Absolutely, for sure. Well, thank you so much. Thank you.

Kendall 31:30

That excerpt is going to stay with me because it captures something we don't always say out loud. Sometimes the first person we tell is a stranger because it feels safer than telling the people we love, or because we don't know where else to put the truth. Gail talked about being the one who receives the avalanche, the emails, the confessions, the private histories people have never been able to describe in their own living rooms. And I think that's part of why spaces like the Untangling Our Roots conference matter and why this podcast exists. Not because every story has a neat ending, but because people deserve somewhere to be heard while they're still in the middle of it. We also talked about something else that hits hard. The way identity doesn't just shift once, it shifts again and again as you process, as you learn, as you grieve what was withheld, and as you decide what language finally fits. If you're listening and you're early in your discovery, or you're years in and still trying to understand what this all means, I hope this episode reminds you that you're not the only one piecing it together. And if you want to go deeper, Gail's books are white, like her, and what they never told us. We'll make sure those are linked in the show notes. Thanks for being with us and holding space for stories that are not always easy to carry alone. And remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist. We'll see you next time.