Critique: Inside the Secret History of the DeGrange Family - The New York Times

Source: nytimes
Authors: (none listed)
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/degrange-family-history-race.html

What the article reports

Susan Saulny, a former New York Times national correspondent, traces her Creole family's history of racial passing across three generations, beginning with brothers George and Edward DeGrange who grew up together at a New Orleans orphanage for Black boys in the 1910s. Edward, light-complexioned enough to pass, moved to Chicago and adopted a white identity; George, darker-skinned, remained in New Orleans. Saulny then arranges and narrates a reunion with Edward's white-identified Chicago descendants, culminating in shared visits to the family's ancestral New Orleans sites.

Factual accuracy — Solid

The piece grounds its historical claims in identified primary documents: baptismal records from the Archdiocese of New Orleans, a 1910 federal census record labeling the brothers "B" for Black, an 1840 notary sale record for "a certain negress slave named Magdelaine, aged about 30 years," and a World War II draft card listing Edward's race as "white." These are specific and verifiable. The 1840 sale price ($550), the property address (Prytania Street), and institutional names (Lafon Orphan Asylum for Colored Boys, Sisters of the Holy Family) are precise and traceable. One minor imprecision: the article says Edward's first job was "most likely for the Illinois Central Railroad" — the hedge is responsible, but readers should note it is not confirmed. The claim that "millions of Black Southerners migrated North" is a well-established historical consensus and is appropriately stated. No outright factual errors are apparent, but reliance on family oral history for some connective tissue is acknowledged by the author.

Framing — Largely transparent, with a few unattributed interpretive moves

This is personal narrative journalism, so authorial voice is appropriate and expected. Still, some framing choices merit notice:

1. "George, too dark to pass even if he had wanted to" — this frames George's decision as foreclosed rather than chosen. The article later acknowledges uncertainty ("Was George — whose brown skin precluded such an option — supportive, distraught or both?"), but the initial formulation presents a historical inference as settled fact without attribution.

2. "That shame, Christine said, had always been misplaced" — the attribution is correct here; this is properly a quoted voice, not the author's. A strength.

3. "We reserved our condemnation for the system that sorted people by color in the first place" — an authorial-voice moral conclusion delivered without attribution. In a first-person essay this is a defensible choice, but it closes interpretive space for the reader on the central ethical question the piece raises.

4. "Ned exasperates me more than anyone on my family tree" — the emotional register is transparent and clearly flagged as the author's view, which is honest first-person craft.

5. The Pope Leo XIV reference — "Leo XIV's maternal grandparents, both of whom are described as Black or 'mulatto' in historical records" — is carefully sourced to records, though the comparison to Edward's case is drawn by authorial voice without an independent historian to assess the parallel.

Source balance

No voices quoted: historians of racial passing or the Great Migration; scholars of Creole identity; sociologists of race; anyone offering friction or skepticism about the author's reconstruction. All human sources are family members with emotional investment in the reunion narrative. The ratio is approximately 10:0 supportive-to-reconciliatory vs. zero dissenting or complicating outside perspectives.

This is a structural consequence of the memoir form — outside scholars were arguably available but not solicited. The piece does not misrepresent anyone's views, but a reader seeking independent historical context will not find it here.

Omissions

1. Scholarship on racial passing. Historians and sociologists (e.g., work on the "passing" literature from Allyson Hobbs or others) could have calibrated how common or exceptional the DeGrange story is. The article asserts "nonfiction stories of those who crossed the color line to the white side are rare" without engaging existing scholarship.

2. Legal and social history of "race fraud." The article mentions "charges of race fraud, mob violence, even lynching" as risks of discovery, but does not cite a case or statute, leaving readers without a concrete sense of how often this enforcement actually occurred versus how often it was threatened.

3. Pope Leo XIV comparison. The article opens by linking the DeGrange story to the new pope's family history, then largely drops the thread. Readers interested in that parallel receive no further resolution or sourcing — it functions primarily as a hook.

4. The orphanage experience. The Lafon Orphan Asylum receives surprisingly brief treatment given that it is the hinge of the brothers' diverging lives. What were conditions like? What happened to Henry after aging out? The article acknowledges Henry's fate briefly, but the institutional history is thin.

5. The author's own disclosure of the story to relatives she had not met. The article describes reaching out to the Chicago DeGranges but does not describe whether the family was asked about or consented to publication — a question readers of narrative family journalism often reasonably have.

What it does well

• Document-grounded history: The narrative consistently anchors its claims in primary records — "a notary's record of sale from 1840," draft cards, census forms — giving the family history unusual evidentiary solidity for this genre.
• Emotional transparency: The author clearly flags her own conflicting feelings — "Ned exasperates me more than anyone on my family tree" — rather than smuggling emotional framing as neutral reporting, which is honest and gives readers room to weigh her perspective.
• Structural fairness to Edward: Rather than flattening Edward as a villain, the piece notes his rescue of younger siblings from the orphanage and presents his choice as a product of systemic coercion, with "It was all trauma" and related quotes carrying genuine complexity.
• Character specificity: Details like Arthur DeGrange Sr. searching restaurant to restaurant for "the taste of my mother's gumbo" and finding it only once — at a restaurant where a Black woman stood over the pot — do real narrative work without editorializing.
• Acknowledgment of researcher contributions: "Alain Delaquérière, Jari C. Honora and American Ancestors contributed research" is a transparency credit rarely seen in narrative features and worth noting positively.
• Self-critical authorial reflection: "I let my feelings about how I assumed the white Chicago DeGranges might react … dictate my actions" models journalistic self-examination in a way that guards against the appearance of a one-sided setup.

Rating

Overall: 7/10 — A well-documented and emotionally honest family memoir that earns its first-person latitude but would benefit from outside historical voices to contextualize its broader claims.