[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: How did you actually bump into this whole thing?

LU OLKOWSKI: Do you want the long winded version or the short winded version?

JAD: Split the difference.

LU: Okay.

JAD: This is our friend Lu Olkowski. She's a radio producer.

LU: I was there 2008.

JAD: And where is there?

LU: Southern Ohio. Pike County, Ohio. An Appalachian part of Ohio.

JAD: When you say Appalachian, I think mountains and stuff. Is that the wrong image?

LU: No, it's the right image. It's country.

JAD: And why were you out there?

LU: I knew someone working on the campaign.

JAD: So this is 2008. So this is Barack Obama part one.

LU: This is Barack Obama part one. And that's why I went.

JAD: Lu says it was the end of October.

LU: One week before the election.

JAD: And in the final days, the Obama campaign was pressing deeper into parts of rural Ohio than almost any other campaign before it.

LU: So I went and I followed Barack Obama volunteers around.

JAD: Just to see.

LU: How is it going to play.

JAD: I mean, how is this race gonna play in a part of the country that's so white? So she went town to town to town with the campaign. Eventually ended up in a tiny little hamlet called East Jackson—not even on the map, population 400 or so. It's right in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And it's a place where who you are, what color you are, well, that just gets real complicated.

CLARICE SHRECK: I mean, I've got white, Irish, German, Indian and all this, but if anyone would walk up to me today and say, "What race are you?" I would say Negro. I'd stand in front of the president today and tell him, hey, I am a Negro and I am a proud American. I'm not black as in color, but I am a Negro. I mean, that's just the way I feel.

LU: This is Clarice.

CLARICE SHRECK: Clarice Shreck.

LU: Clarice was one of the first people I met in East Jackson.

CLARICE SHRECK: So legal documents ain't supposed to lie. Right?

LU: Okay, tell me what you're doing.

LU: And Clarice ...

CLARICE SHRECK: I'm getting a birth certificate out to show you.

LU: I think her experience has taught her that enough people think she's white that she goes out of her way when you meet her.

CLARICE SHRECK: This is a legal document. Come on.

LU: To let you know she's black.

CLARICE SHRECK: Okay, this is how it reads.

LU: Do you keep this in your purse?

CLARICE SHRECK: \Yes, I keep this in my purse. And yes, it says Harley Harris.

LU: That's her father.

CLARICE SHRECK: And then it comes over and it says, color or race. And it says what?

LU: Negro?

CLARICE SHRECK: It says Mary Marguerite Simmons. What's it say?

LU: Negro. Okay, so you go as black. So introduce to me your two daughters.

CLARICE SHRECK: Okay, well, you gotta go and go there, don't you? My oldest daughter.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: I'm Carlotta.

CLARICE SHRECK: Carlotta Hickson.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: I'm from East Jackson in Pike County, Ohio.

LU: Carlotta lives right next door to her mom.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Yes.

LU: And like her mom, if you met her, you'd probably just assume she was white.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: The only thing you could tell is Black on me is my hair. I mean, it's frizzy, that's it. But I've went as black all my life. And I guess I was just raised that way.

CLARICE SHRECK: She stuck by it. Carlotta will stand and fight to the end.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: I don't think you should deny a part of you that is there.

CLARICE SHRECK: Now. My youngest daughter, Allison Manning. Hmm, that's a whole different story.

ALLY MANNING: I'm way too white to be black.

CLARICE SHRECK: She denies the fact that she's a Negro.

ALLY MANNING: Look at my hair. Look at my skin. I mean, really creamy. Cream, cream, cream. Lots of cream. You know, let's just go really white.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Don't ask me why, but she decided that she's white.

ALLY MANNING: No, not decide a few years ago that I was gonna be white. I have been white since I've been 12. Old enough to say that I've been white.

CLARICE SHRECK: You know, See, and that aggravates me. That aggravates me. It really just. God, it just makes me so mad.

LU: To understand why their thing is so intense. Please, I think you just need to unpack what this area is all about. Okay. Like, about five miles from where Clarice lives is a town called Waverly. And Waverly was settled like before the Civil War by a group of white folks who came up from Virginia with the express purpose that it should be an all white town, even though it was in the north. So to kind of achieve this, one of the things that happened is that a sign was put up on the outskirts of town warning black people to stay out of Waverly after dark. And to this day, Waverly is still something like 96% white, according to the census. So that was Waverly.

LU: Meanwhile, right next door, you had this place called East Jackson where Claracy now lives. And you know, back in the day, a completely different situation was happening there. You had Irish and German timbermen who were mixing with runaway slaves and Native Americans who had were running from the Trail of Tears. All these different cultures were blending and intermarrying and having these kids. And then grandkids who were racially very, very mixed. But to the folks back in Waverly, all those people in East Jackson, they were just all black.

JAD: No matter what they looked like, didn't.

LU: Matter what they looked like. They were the other. And for people in Waverly, the other was black. And so if you lived in East Jackson, you are black. So imagine you're Clarice.

CLARICE SHRECK:, my dad's mother was a full blooded white woman. My dad's dad was a German.

LU: She's a mixture of all of these things. And if you look at her family tree, you could say she's only 1/16th black.

CLARICE SHRECK: But when you are raised from a child up and you're told you're black.

LU: That's all you are.

CLARICE SHRECK: You're a n*****.

LU: Well, she says, at a certain point, that just becomes who you are.

CLARICE SHRECK: And I'm not ashamed one bit. I'm proud to be a Negro. Very proud.

LU: So you had these kind of twin communities right next door to each other, largely separate. They both had their own schools. Waverly, of course, was, you know, bigger and multiple schools. And in East Jackson ...

CLARICE SHRECK: We used to have a school in our area and it was called East Jackson School, Little one room schoolhouse.

LU: And then in the late 60s or early 70s, the school board voted to close that school.

CLARICE SHRECK: And all of a sudden all of those kids had to go to Waverly.

LU: Where pretty much everyone was white.

CLARICE SHRECK: When we went to Waverly schools on Martin Luther King's Day, the white kids at that school would hang up signs saying, go home n*****s.

LU: And this was in the 80s.

JAD: What?

CLARICE SHRECK: And so that's when they decided, well, on Martin Luther King's day, we won't have school.

JAD: In the 80s?

LU: Yeah, I heard that story from Claracy, her sister Juanita, from the neighbors across the road.

ALLY MANNING: And I.

LU: And even more surprising, you know, Ally told me when she and her sister got to school in the late 90s, things hadn't changed that much.

ALLY MANNING: I got made fun of all the time. It was really, really bad. I would have kids, you know, come up to me in class and say, you know, well, she's, you know, she's dirty, you know, because she's from East Jackson and they're all dirty out there. And you know, when they would do the little check in your head at school thing, they'd be like, oh, you know, she going to have it because she's black. Because I was black, I'm going to have head lice. I, you know, I'd come home and cry mom, and be like, oh, don't even worry about what? They say they're, you know, you got to be better than them, blah, blah, blah

LU: But she says she couldn't ignore it, so she started to fight back.

ALLY MANNING: I would punch him, you know, just punch them. Mom was constantly in the office because I was fighting

LU: But at some point during the eighth grade, Ally says something shifted.

ALLY MANNING: We were sitting in class.

LU: Two white girls were sitting behind her.

ALLY MANNING: And I didn't even know these girls. And I was just sitting there minding my own business, and they came up from behind me and just threw this deodorant at me, literally. And they said, here, we thought you might need this. Don't black people need deodorant? Keep in mind, this is in the middle of class. Everybody is in there, and the teacher's there, doesn't say anything, just tells them to calm it down. And I was just like, you know, I tried to ignore them, but they just kept poking me. Hey, hey. They just kept, you know, poking me and telling me I was dirty. Black people are dirty. You're dirty. You know, we know where you come from. You're dirty. Everyone's dirty out there. You're all dirty.

LU: And she said at that moment, she just kind of gave up.

ALLY MANNING: I didn't like having to fight. I didn't like feeling like everybody was out to get me. I wanted to be part of the group, not the outsider. It sucked being the outsider. I got sick of it.

LU: Shortly after that class, she decided ...

ALLY MANNING: I don't want to be black. I don't have to. When I went into high school, I had a break, you know, the summer break. And over the summer, I decided that I was going to transform myself, my life. It was going to be a new start for me.

LU: That summer, Ally dropped a bunch of weight, grew her hair long.

ALLY MANNING: I started wearing makeup.

LU: And when school started up again that.

ALLY MANNING: Fall, I didn't even look like I did when I was in grade school, you know, or middle school. What did you do? Well, I started hanging out with the older crowd, the, you know, juniors and seniors, so they didn't even know who I was. People would ask what color I was. I was white. What color are your parents? They're white, you know, and if anyone asks, well, can we meet your parents? Well, she's gone on business. Oh, my dad, he works a lot, you know. Great. I have two hardworking white parents, and you're never going to meet them.

CLARICE SHRECK: She came home at night and she said, I had a wonderful day at school. And I said, you did? I said, that's nice to hear. Somebody that's black. Tell me that. And she said, I told you I wasn't going as black.

ALLY MANNING: I didn't talk to my sister very much either. Just because every time I would talk to her, I'd have to explain who she was.

CLARICE SHRECK: Carlotta would be telling her friends and pointing at Ally, saying, that's my sister. And Ally would be telling her friends, that's not my sister. This girl's crazy, you know? Don't believe nothing she's saying.

LU: Whenever Ally's new friends did run into her sister ...

ALLY MANNING: They picked on her. They tormented her, teased, and throw things at you.

LU: Same way they once picked on Ally.

ALLY MANNING: You know, calling her the N word.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Nobody likes you.

ALLY MANNING: Black people are dirty. You're dirty. But did I dare say anything about it? No way.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Actually, Ally would lead a lot of the teasing. Yes, she would help him out.

ALLY MANNING: I'd mock her, too.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Making fun of me could make her popular. Then she would do it.

LU: But she would make you cry at school.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Well, sure she would.

ALLY MANNING: I saw her cry so many times, and I stood and did nothing.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: And she wonders why we're not close now. And, you know, you don't forget things like that. You don't forget who made your life miserable.

ALLY MANNING: She hated high school. She would never go back if you paid her. And then you have me. I loved it. I had all these friends, and I really felt like everybody loved me. Granted, I don't know how good of friends they were, because, you know, in a different situation, they probably wouldn't have. But I didn't care. I didn't care how they lied to me. I just cared that they lied to me.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: And still this day, Ally is that rotten little child inside. And I love her to death. I do. But still inside, she's still that little insecure child that wants to be friends with the popular crowd.

LU: After high school, Ally moved across town.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: She lives in Piketon.

LU: It's on the other side of Waverly.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: Yeah, it's on the other side of Waverly.

LU: Into a predominantly white neighborhood. Carlotta stayed in East Jackson, and she stayed black.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: To be honest, the way I feel about that, it really doesn't bother me one way or the other. Bothers my mom more than it bothers me.

ALLY MANNING: Oh, yes.

LU: Ally says it comes up whenever she brings a friend over to her mom's house.

ALLY MANNING: As soon as they walk in the door, the very first question out of her mouth is, did Ally tell you she was black?

CLARICE SHRECK: If she brings a guy or a friend, I tell him we're Negroes. I want him to know what we are. I do.

ALLY MANNING: I'll call her to the site or whatever. And I'm like, do you have to do this every time? Well, what, you're ashamed of us now? I am not ashamed of anybody, but I am not black. You know, I am white. Stop doing that.

LU: As much as Ally and Clarice argue, they're actually pretty close.

CLARICE SHRECK: Mommy's on the phone, kids. Come here, Nessie.

LU: Clarice takes care of Ally's kids a lot.

CLARICE SHRECK: Come here. Mommy's on the phone.

LU: They speak on the phone every day.

CLARICE SHRECK: Caleb wants to talk. Come here, Caleb.

ALLY MANNING: Look.

CLARICE SHRECK: Come here, baby. This is Vanessa. Here, take this. Talk to Mommy. Mommy. And that's Caleb. These are Ally's two children now. Ally's two children. They'll cry if you tell them that they're a Negro. Caleb believes that he's white.

ALLY MANNING: He's got blonde hair. Blonde hair. And, you know, he's really pale like me.

CLARICE SHRECK: And when you say, excuse me, you know you're black. He will cry and say, no, I'm not either. I'm white.

ALLY MANNING: And she's like, you just ruined those kids. Why don't you want them to be proud of where they came from? I said. I told him he is black in his family, but he is not black. When I got married, my husband knew beforehand what he was getting into.

LU: He lived in Waverly and he knew she lived in East Jackson.

ALLY MANNING: That I came from a black community. He'd met my family and said that that was fine with him. And the further we got into our marriage, the more I could see him becoming more and more racist.

LU: So they split up, but he still had the right to see his kids.

ALLY MANNING: And during one of the visits, I overheard a conversation that he was having with Caleb. And Daddy joined a new group and he wanted Caleb to join it. He said, you can't right now, but when you get bigger, Daddy's gonna introduce you to him. And he said, we get to wear white hats and sheets and we get to beat people up. And I walk in the room and I'm like, what are you talking about? And he goes, oh, I didn't tell you about that. And there was nothing I could do about it. You know, he had visitations on the weekend Caleb would come back and he would say the God awfulest things. He would tell my mom, you're a n***** You're a n*****, Grandma.

CLARICE SHRECK: We were sitting there one day and I don't remember exactly. It was a black show on TV that we were watching. I'm thinking it was A Tyler Perry movie. But anyway, Caleb came up to me and he said, grandma, you're a n*****. I said, no, honey, I'm not a n*****. I'm a negro. And he said, no, you're a n*****. I said, who told you to say that? Caleb. He said, well, my dad said he's going to get the KKK and come up here and what he's going to do.

ALLY MANNING: And I said, my son saying that in a community where people are all black, that doesn't give him much of a fighting chance. Finally, he stopped saying it. Thank God he was young enough to where it could be stopped.

CARLOTTA HICKSON: But Caleb is definitely a mini me. A Valley. Ally's sister, Carlotta, I mean, honestly, he. He acts just like her and Lanessa. And even though she's only 2 years old, she'll go around telling you all the time, I'm black. I'm black. So I think, you know, that will be another Ally Carlotta situation. As they're growing up, they kind of.

ALLY MANNING: Want more for my family. I'm not gonna say violent them be treated the way my sister was treated. They don't deserve that. So as long as I can pass for white, I go by white. Sometimes. I thought about moving away, but I love my mom so much and I could never leave her. But in the event that something ever happens to my mom, me and my kids will pack up and we will leave the state and we won't come back. And I will no longer be associated with this area. With East Jackson, it'll all be just a blur. I mean, I want out now, but I can't leave her. She knows that. I told her, when you're gone, I'm gone.

JAD: Producer Lu Olkowski. That story was sponsored by Ohio's Hill Country Heritage Area and made possible with funding from the Ohio Humanities Council. I also want to give a huge thanks to the radio show State of the Reunion, hosted by the brilliant Al Letzen. State of the Reunion initially broadcast a version of the story, which just won a big award. They're an amazing show. You should definitely check them out. Stateoftherunion.com I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

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