Haizlip Speaks At Agassiz

The author of one of The New York Times Book Review's Notable Books of 1994 recounted her quest to trace her family's multiracial roots in a speech to about 120 last night at Agassiz Theatre.

Shirlee T. Haizlip outlined her book The Sweeter the Juice,which describes her lifelong endeavor to reunite the Black and white sides of her family.

The story begins near the turn of the century with her mother's family, which was so racially mixed that it had at times been classified by the Census Bureau as Black, white and mulatto.

That family split up after her grandmother's death in 1916. Haizlip's mother, then a young adult, remained Washington D.C. while the rest of her immediate relatives left.

She added that as a young girl, she had always seen pictures of her Black father's family, but never saw any of her mother's lighter-skinned relatives.

At age 12, her mother said the family had left to become "white people."

"I said, 'Mother, some day we're going to find your family,'" she recalled.

When she graduated from Wellesley, she began to search for her roots.

After extensive archival research and with the help of a 1929 letter from her mother's family lawyer, she managed to trace family members to their current residences. She hired a private detective, who found that the immediate family was dead, except for her mother's sister.

When Haizlip saw her aunt, she was elated to see that she looked like her mother. "And when she smiled, all of the badfeelings I'd had drained out at me. She was just alittle old lady who looked like my mother," shesaid.

When Haizlip's mother finally saw her sister,the meeting was less emotional than might beexpected, she said. Then she posed the questionshe'd been waiting 76 years to ask: why had shebeen left behind in Washington?

"She said very quietly, 'Well, I don't know,because I was a little girl, too.'

When Haizlip's mother finally saw her sister,the meeting was less emotional than might beexpected, she said. Then she posed the questionshe'd been waiting 76 years to ask: why had shebeen left behind in Washington?

"She said very quietly, 'Well, I don't know,because I was a little girl, too.'