Several years ago, Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs was talking with a favorite aunt, who was also the family storyteller. Hobbs learned that she had a distant cousin whom she'd never met nor heard of.
Which is exactly the way the cousin wanted it.
Hobbs' cousin had been living as white, far away in California, since she'd graduated from high school. This was at the insistence of her mother.
"She was black, but she looked white," Hobbs said.