[HOUSTON.CBSLOCAL] A woman who thought she was black found out after 70 years that she was actually white.
Rachel Dolezal is black green with envy.
Verda Byrd on Converse tells KENS-TV that she found out she was white when she started searching for her biological parents in 2013.
“My adoptive mother, Edwinna Wagner, never told me that she had adopted a white baby,” Byrd explained. “She took it to her grave that she had a white daughter.”
Byrd was originally born to Earl and Daisy Beagle – described as white transients – in September 1942 in Missouri. Byrd’s original birth name was Jeanette Beagle.
Her and her four siblings were taken by the state of Missouri after Daisey Beagle fell 30 feet to the ground in a trolley accident. Earl Beagle had already walked out on the family by the time of the accident.
She was then adopted by an African-American family from Newton, Kansas – Ray and Edwinna Byrd. They changed her name from Jeanette to Verda Ann Wagner.
She grew up treated as a “fair-skinned black child.” |