Susan Saulny

I was at home in Washington, D.C., and I saw this news in like a lot of America.

I was stunned.

And I'm in touch with a lot of people in New Orleans over Twitter.

different social media channels or text threads.

And immediately I saw an eruption of excitement.

And I figured that's completely normal for a city as Catholic as New Orleans, you know.

But what I began to see is that, hey, everybody, he's got roots here.

He's Creole.

And I thought, Tanya, you know the amount of misinformation.

But that same night, a historian in New Orleans, a very well-known researcher who helped me on the story, who went on to do that, and the Archdiocese of New Orleans confirmed that news.

So it was an amazing feeling.

You know, my grandfather kept Edward's secret right from the very beginning out of a sense of protectiveness for him.

He knew that this was a very dangerous and risky thing that Edward was doing.

And when Edward left, he was just a teenager or a very young man in his 20s.

My grandfather was the oldest and I think felt a real sense of protection toward him.

And that's the feeling that he passed down to all of us.

We don't talk much about Edward.

We don't want this to get out.

We protect Edward because black men who are found to be posing as white could face.

all sorts of violence, even death in the Jim Crow era.