Nella Larson wrote her way out of her family's web of lies, keeping their

darkest secret quiet for decades. The reason her family abandoned her and denied

her existence is sickening. This is two-minute black history, what you didn't

learn in school.

Nella Larson didn't leave much behind when she died. She had little possessions in

her ground floor apartment, was childless and divorced, and estranged from her

half-sister, who denied even knowing she existed. The worst part? Larson's entire

life was full of white lies. Larson's family was passing. She lived in a

working-class neighborhood of Chicago with her mother, stepfather, and half-sister.

To the outside world, they were a white family. Only Nella wasn't, but her mother

Mary could never let such a secret get out. Nella Larson was visibly black, so

eventually the family separated and she was swept into a lifetime of abandonment.

This erasure inspired some of her best work. She wrote Passing, a novel about two

biracial friends Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry, who reunited at a Chicago

hotel after years apart. Claire, Irene discovers, has been living as a white woman

married to a racist who has no clue about his wife's blackness. Larson's life

and work remind us how deeply violent white supremacy is, no matter how close

we are to them. Like Nella Larson, we must forge our paths and write our own

stories. Despite how white supremacy tries to erase our blackness, they

literally could never. In order to move towards the future, you've got to look to

the past. This has been Two Minute Black History, a podcast by Push Black. Show

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