Here is an interesting article about Black Germans born to white German mothers with African American fathers. Many were adopted by African American families after WW2.
Rudi Richardson knew something about what it meant to be a black man in the United States. But after being deported to Germany, the country where he was born, shortly before his 47th birthday, he had to start figuring out what it meant to be black and German — in a land he barely remembered and whose language he didn’t speak.
He started life as Udo Ackermann, born in a Bavarian women’s prison in 1955. His mother, a Jewish woman named Liesolette, was serving a prison term for prostitution. His father, whom he never met, was an African-American serviceman named George. Rudi was given up for adoption.
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Read the full article here.
much and then learning some intimate details about their lives and history and how they came to be is like eavesdropping on a conversation your parents didn’t want you to hear. But it is also deeper than that. I read biographies with envy too, wishing I had such detailed personal history. Wishing I could re-trace the paths of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Wishing I knew my racial past. The truth of it, not just what my imagination tells me. My adoptive parents’ histories are part of my personal narrative, but they are only a fraction of my story. Reading Where Did You Sleep Last Night? nearly fell in the realm of fantasy for me. Senna tells the story of her white blue blood mother and her black Southern father, their failed relationship, their family history and Senna’s own struggle to understand her family and cultural identity. She also tells a little about her siblings and her current family – her husband (writer Percival Everett) and their young son. Many mixed race (or bi-cultural) people will find this story fascinating: she explains how her parents came together in a time when mixed marriages – particularly black-white – were uncommon and only recently legal in the United States. After her parents split up, Senna lived with her white mother and spent much of her time in white environments. She is a very light-skinned woman and in fact was, is, often mistaken for white. She describes the hostility she has encountered being out with her father; people often saw them for a couple, an older black man with a young “white” woman. On her mother’s side, Senna had very little research to do. Many of her mother’s ancestors were prominent Boston citizens who had written at length about their family history, a history that includes a slave-owing past. Her father’s family history is difficult to uncover and many questions are left unanswered. Much of the book describes Senna’s quest, with her father’s help, to learn the truth about her father’s mother and father. Was Senna’s paternal grandfather an Irish American priest or a Mexican boxer? Her paternal grandmother was a talented and educated but highly secretive woman. Senna discovers her father has a long lost half-sibling who was given up for adoption. The details of this book are fascinating. Even more interesting are the author’s personal revelations: her difficult relationship with her father, her reaction and the reaction of friends to the light complexion of her infant son, the family dynamic when all her siblings and their spouses and children gather for Christmas.
