Say I'm Dead

Fearful of prison timeor lynchingfor violating Indianas anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's black father and white mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or a victim of human trafficking. When Johnson was born, social norms and her government-issued birth certificate said she was Negro, nullifying her mothers white blood in her identity. As an African American, she withstood the advice of a high school counselor who said that blacks dont go to college by graduating from Harvard. Then, as a code-switching business executive feeling too far from her black roots, she searched her fathers black genealogy. Johnson was amazed to suddenly realize that her mother's whole white side wasand always had beenmissing. When confronted, her mother's decades-old secret spilled out. Despite her parents crippling and well-founded fears of rejection and reprisals, and her black militant brothers accusation that she was a race traitor, Johnson went searching for the white family who did not know she existed. When she found them, its not just their shock and her mamas shame that have to be overcome, but her own fraught experiences with whites.