Ancestry’s Barred Doors

I believe every family has a door marked Do Not Open. At first, you’re warned through subtle clues not to touch it. Eventually, you forget it’s even there. I walked past that door for years, never noticing it until my father’s death on a cold, dark morning in the fall of 2005 at Mercy Hospital in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Only then did I see it clearly, like someone who stumbles upon a lost key and wonders where it belongs. 

On my father’s side, there’s a branch of the family he never stayed close to. For reasons I’m still piecing together, they were kept, intentionally or not, at arm’s length. At first, I assumed the distance was simply generational drift. But I’ve come to wonder if it was about more than that.

My father was raised as an only child. Fewer slices of the pie. When Cardinal Ritter desegregated the St. Louis Archdiocese, Catholic schools became an affordable gateway for young Black children to access the same education as their White peers. That opportunity shaped my father’s world and, perhaps quietly, shaped the distance between him and the rest of the family.

My grandfather lived in a different world than his father. My father lived in a different world than my grandfather. And I grew up in a different world than my father. These worlds weren’t shaped only by the times, but by the doors our parents opened for us. What I’m learning is that every door opened in one direction quietly closes another, and families are often shaped as much by what we leave behind as by what we carry forward.

Though my second cousins and I belong to the same generation, I know I grew up in a very different world than many of them. Our grandparents were part of the same northern migration, from the Mississippi Delta to West Memphis, Arkansas, and eventually to St. Louis. But somewhere along the way, our paths diverged. Did our worlds simply drift apart, or was there something deeper at work?

My father was driven. My childhood was marked by a quietness in him, if not a coldness. He had a singular focus, always absorbed in the task at hand. We moved across the country six times before I turned seven, each relocation chasing another promotion. I once heard that a starving man never feels full, and I wonder if growing up poor in the ghetto left him with a hunger no raise or title could ever satisfy. Maybe he learned early on that the price of advancement is often your peace of mind.

He had a sense of humor, but it was tempered by a seriousness that could slip into casual meanness. That coldness lingered throughout my upbringing. And yet, in hindsight, I see how deeply he cared, especially for young Black kids and teenagers. Watching him as a grandfather felt like meeting someone entirely new. It was as if he had lived his whole life preparing for the role he was always meant to play.

I wonder now if the distance between him and his cousins was shaped more by the earlier ice-and-fire version of himself than by the man he eventually became–warmer, more loving, and finally at ease. Regardless, that door behind him seemed to remain closed.

On my mother’s side, the ancestry is rainbow-mixed, layered, complex, and shaped by generations of racial boundary-crossing. Historically, some family members had the option to pass as White, and some did. They blended into society, leaving behind the burdens of their Blackness and stepping into opportunities proximity to Whiteness afforded them.

It’s a paradox. The ease with which they passed suggests the racial ratio–White versus Black–was already tilted in that direction. In many places, people would simply consider that dominant ancestry. But in America, the fear of racial contamination was strong, and the one-drop rule became the measuring stick. Now, with DNA testing, we’re seeing how many people rejected that rule within their own lifetimes and lived as their most dominant ethnicity, insane rule be damned.

For me, crossing racial boundaries has become a personal experiment. Reaching out to descendants of former slaveholders is never predictable. I shift my focus from one closed door to another, learning that reaching into complexity is itself a complicated affair. Some descendants ignore me entirely.

The most unpredictable responses come from DNA connections whose results show a small percentage of African ancestry. Over the years, I’ve learned how many people discover this part of their lineage for the first time through a regional breakdown on a screen. Some are shocked. Some are excited. Some are indifferent. Some are in denial. Some are angry.

After years of research, my family tree is well established. In many cases, I can pinpoint exactly where my lines intersect with theirs. Often, I know more about their history than they do. I know how we’re linked and which of our shared relatives once chose to pursue a whiter future. What I don’t have are the stories from their perspective. I want to know how they lived after stepping into that new identity. I want to connect. But the feeling isn’t always mutual.

When it is, every story is unique. Some left counties. Some crossed state lines. Some left the country and returned with a new identity. By all appearances, they’re White. Legally, they would not have been.

I’m no longer surprised by how often my outreach is met with silence. In fairness, I’m a stranger reaching out of the blue. Still, I wonder: is this something they never knew? Something they knew but never expected to surface? Once they found out, did they share it openly, or bury it deeper? For some, that door must be locked, barred, and ideally hidden.

Afterward, I’m still the same person I was before reaching out, just with one more name crossed off the list. You don’t start with that kind of detachment. It comes with experience. Sometimes it’s not personal at all. It’s the discomfort of the moment: I don’t want to have a conversation with someone descended from people my family once enslaved. In another time, under different circumstances, maybe we’d have a different relationship. But in this space, it’s hit or miss. You grow thick skin. Even when someone shares information, they rarely want to keep the door open for long.

Sometimes rejection stings. But no one promised us a painless life. As the old folks used to say, sometimes you just have to shake it off and keep going. There will always be questions that receive no answer but a stark, quiet emptiness. I’ve grown strong enough to brush it off. Still, I remain curious. Always.

I find myself standing in front of many doors. On the other side is someone connected to me. Some doors are barred by history, some locked with shame, some held shut by someone pretending the space they stand in is vacant. Others bear yellowing signs with cracked letters: Do Not Disturb. Do Not Enter. Still, I knock. Still, I try the handle. The story on the other side belongs to me, even if I may only ever know it from the threshold.

Lamont Neal is a writer of creative nonfiction and poetry. Though he began writing early in life, he spent many years keeping his work private, sharing it quietly through journals, blogs, and social media, before returning fully to his creative practice.

While he built a successful professional career, Lamont eventually embraced the truth that financial security is not the same as truly living. Writing became the place where lived experience, both painful and profound, could be examined, shaped, and shared.

He is the author of the self-published memoirs For Chloe, A Thinner Life, and Hey Nico, Got a Minute? His current manuscripts include A Tree in a Storm, creative nonfiction, and Unearth, poetry. His work has appeared in Poetry Habitat, Spillwords, and Blood + Honey.

A Song for Lamont