Susan Saulny

Everyone had brothers and sisters, and there's so many aunts and uncles.

I said, you know, something like, Grandpa, why don't you have any brothers and sisters?

And he said, I do.

And that was a surprise to me.

And he said, he often spoke in little French or Creole phrases, little catchphrases.

And the one he said then was, passez blanc and c'est la vie.

As a child, how did you interpret that?

It was often frustrating, but he had his reasons, I understand now.

And I think back and I wonder, how would the truth have helped a little black girl that he's trying to raise with pride and ambition change?

I think he was trying, just like he was trying to protect Edward, he was trying to protect me.

So you did this thing that you had

Jacques de Grange came from the Alpine region of what is now southeastern France.

And he prospered almost immediately selling wine in New Orleans.

And prior to this reporting, I didn't know much about him.

What we found was he came to America and did well and almost immediately enslaved women and children.

And his son went on to be one of the first men to volunteer to fight in the Civil War.

So what I learned that I hadn't known was that my family on the French side, they were diehard defenders of the Confederacy.

They weren't just in New Orleans and sort of going along for the ride.

They were very much a part of the active fight for the South.

And the extent of that had never been clear to me.