{"id":20282,"date":"2012-01-31T04:57:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T04:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20282"},"modified":"2012-01-31T05:15:35","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:15:35","slug":"don-lemon-legacy-of-one-drop-rule-inspires-search-for-family-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20282","title":{"rendered":"Don Lemon: Legacy of ‘one drop’ rule inspires search for family history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don Lemon: Legacy of ‘one drop’ rule inspires search for family history<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable News Network<\/a> (CNN)
\nIn America: You define America. What defines you?<\/a>
\n2012-01-29<\/p>\n

Don Lemon<\/strong>, Anchor
\nCNN Newsroom<\/em><\/p>\n

This is\u00a0 final installment of\u00a0 a three-part series about the (1<\/span>)ne Drop Project<\/a>. Read Don Lemon’s column, “<\/em>It only takes one drop<\/em><\/a>,” and Yaba Blay’s<\/a> column, “<\/em>What does Blackness look like?<\/em><\/a>“<\/em><\/p>\n

You never know from where inspiration will come.
\n\u00a0
\nI am often envious of my friends who can recite stories about ancestors that have been handed down through generations. I can\u2019t do that. As a descendant of slavery in America, that hasn’t felt possible for me. Truthfully, I didn\u2019t think about it much until a few weeks ago, after I was asked by CNN\u2019s In America team to write about the impact of a mixed racial background on my life, the idea that “one drop” of black blood makes you black<\/a>.
\n\u00a0
\nIn that article, I wrote about how my aunt and grandmother in Louisiana often were mistaken for white. I wrote about the extremes they went to in order to protect their husbands, who were black, from beatings by white men, or worse.
\n\u00a0
\nAs I began to write the article, I sent a text message to my mother asking that she email photos of my aunt and grandmother. She sent me what she had, but asked why I wanted them. I told her I\u2019d call to explain once I got home that evening.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I finished the draft of the article, I zipped off a copy to her via email. A few minutes later, as I was driving home from work, my phone rang. When my mother began to tell me the stories of my aunt and grandmother, I had to pull over in a parking lot to take it all in. Some of it I knew. Much of it I didn\u2019t…<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don Lemon: Legacy of ‘one drop’ rule inspires search for family history Cable News Network (CNN) In America: You define America. What defines you? 2012-01-29 Don Lemon, Anchor CNN Newsroom This is\u00a0 final installment of\u00a0 a three-part series about the (1)ne Drop Project. Read Don Lemon’s column, “It only takes one drop,” and Yaba Blay’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,125,8,6462,20,842],"tags":[9247,9447,3142,9220,7993,3343,7992],"class_list":["post-20282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-videos","tag-1ne-drop-project","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-don-lemon","tag-yaba-a-blay","tag-yaba-amgborale-blay","tag-yaba-blay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}