This is the house that I grew up in.

And, you know, we're standing here on a sidewalk looking over the house.

But back when I lived here, there was no sidewalk.

And the house was white. Everything was white on white.

And I mean white, you know, white in the greenest grass. My parents moved my two sisters and

me in 1975 when I was just four years old. Maplewood, a suburb of 25,000 people at the time, was more than 90%

white. As I rode my bike through the woods and trails, I had questions. How and why did these

black families manage to settle here, surrounded by restrictions designed to keep them out.

The answer began with the couple who lived in the big house behind ours, James and Francis Hughes.

You're listening to Unlocking the Games, episode one.

My name is Lee Hawkins.

I'm a journalist and author of the book I Am Nobody Slade,

how uncovering my family's history set me free.

I investigated 400 years of my black family's history, how enslavement in

Jim Crow apartheid in my father's home state of Alabama, the great migration to St. Paul,

and our later move to the suburbs shaped us. My producer Kelly and I returned to my childhood neighborhood.

When we pulled up to my house, a colonial-style rambler, we met a middle-aged black woman.

She was visiting her mother, who lived in the brick home once owned by our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Hutton.

How are you doing?

It hasn't changed that much.

People keep it up pretty well, huh?

It feels good to be back,

...