Alvera Frederic
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Alvera Rita Kalina, (née Frederic, October 21, 1921April 5, 2014) was a multiracial American who passed as white. After her marriage she kept the secret of her heritage from her children. She is the subject of ''White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing'', written by her daughter, Gail Lukasik.


Early life

Her parents were Camille Kilbourne and Azemar Alfred Frederic (born 1897). She was listed in the Louisiana census as 'Col', or colored.


Personal life

Alvera Rita Frederic Kalina was born in 1921 to Camille Kilbourne and Azemar Frederic. Camille was of English and Scottish heritage and Alvera considered her father's lineage to be of French stock. Theirs was a brief union, both later remarried and had separate families. Albert Girard, Azemar's maternal grandfather and Celeste Girard Frederic, his mother, were both listed in the 1900 census with the appellation, B. in the column for race, indicating that they were black. Azemar's father was Leon Frederic, who lived in the Girard household at 379 Ursuline Avenue in New Orleans. Azemar and Camille married and moved to 2921 St. Ann St., where Alvera was born. Under the rules of the day in the south, (the one-drop rule), this made Alvera, their daughter and a descendant of French-Creoles, also black. However, the 1930 census has her father Azemar Frederic classified as W.—or white. The 1940 census listed Alvera Frederic as black. She was working as a server in a teashop at the time and moved north to Ohio four years later, married Harold Kalina, a white man. Like some black Americans at the time, Alvera passed as white for socioeconomic benefit. She feared her friends finding out what was for the time, a 'dirty secret'. She did not inform their children of their racial heritage. In 1997, 2 years after the death of her father, Gail Lukasik confronted her mother with what her genealogy search had uncovered, namely that Alvera was listed as colored in the census and on her birth certificate, which had been confirmed by the State of Louisiana in a letter. Denial was the initial response, then Alvera broke down and shamefully confessed. She made Gail swear not to tell a soul, not even her brother, until she died. It was a solemn promise Gail would keep for 17 years. All her mother's quirks seemed to fall into place. Wearing make-up to bed, "in case you suddenly took ill and went to a hospital you had to look your best!". Or her fear of sunlight, and the obsessive neatness of her house, where you could eat off the floor, or the dramatic Sunday church entrances where they took the first pew and a neighbor royally derided them as 'the first family'. Gail confided to her husband and her children, who seemed not the least encumbered by their newly found black heritage.


''Genealogy Roadshow''

Gail's son, a PhD. candidate, became the family researcher and he compiled a binder that contained the family history. Then came the Genealogy Roadshow, who did follow-up investigations and a DNA test. Gail's story was chosen for a television episode that traced her genealogy from a free man of color, Leon Frederic, who served in the
Louisiana Native Guards This is a list of regiments from the U.S. state of Louisiana that fought in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The list of Louisiana Confederate Civil War units is shown separately. Artillery *1st Louisiana Regiment He ...
during the Civil War. Gail's reservation about signing a contract was ameliorated when the producers altered it to allow her to retain the rights to the story. They shot backstory with her in her hometown on August 7, 2014, in Libertyville, Illinois. Lukasik, kept the secret for seventeen years before publishing her story in a book, ''White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing''.


Further reading

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Tragic mulatto The tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person (a "mulatto"), who is assumed to be dep ...
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Passing (novel) ''Passing'' is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1929. Set primarily in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the story centers on the reunion of two childhood friends—Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield— ...
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man ''The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man'' (1912/1927) by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional account of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man," living in post-Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early t ...
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Imitation of Life (1959 film) ''Imitation of Life'' is a 1959 American drama film directed by Douglas Sirk, produced by Ross Hunter and released by Universal International. It was Sirk's final Hollywood film and dealt with issues of race, class and gender. ''Imitation of Lif ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frederic, Alvera 1921 births 2014 deaths American people of Creole descent African-American history of Louisiana 20th-century women 20th-century American people Louisiana Creole people