Finding Your Roots

My dad got into a public battle with the KKK. Mm-hm. And so I knew about that and it was scary. For over a year Rosanne's family was harassed incessantly as white supremacists, hoping to push back against the civil rights movement sought to portray her parents as emblems of a society gone astray. Rosanne's father even went so far as to make a public statement that his wife was, in fact, white, but our researchers would find that the story was more complex than the family could possibly know. In the 1870 census, we noticed something surprising about Rosanne's great-great-grandfather a man named Lafayette Robinson. Rosanne, could you please tell me what the census says about Lafayette's physical description. Male M. -

Henry

Any idea what M stands for? No. Mulatto. So, he was half black, half white. He was mixed race. (laughs) So, it was, at least, a small part true. (soft instrumental music)