and then there's steven wahl. >> so steven was the last? he's the last colored wahl, is he not? >> right. so he -- the last of o.s.b. wahl's line. so he stays in the howard hill neighborhood for a long time, and then the children decide that they want to sell the house. you know, you have the parents that have died, the children all own it together. they decide to sell the house. they sell the house. it's razed, and a segregated school is built on the site. and with that money with his share steven wahl moves to a different neighborhood near catholic university. and he decides he's not going to change his name and he continues to work at the government printing office where everyone knows he's african-american. he's going to become white by keeping ms. mouth shut, and it works for a little while. >> this is an interesting thing because i was telling daniel those of us who are black, especially of my age born in world war 2, know a friend or relative who has moved across the color line to become white and was lost to us. we describe people having a past or lost to the family peop

so you see steven would -- the other thing i want to say, is i can identify with steven wahl. my family's not that grand. my great-grandfather missed being born a slave by 90 days. he was conceived in a relationship between a slavemaster and his mother, who was an enslaved woman. just barely born free. and he was a -- he was a pistol of a guy. the one thing about him was he didn't really take any stuff off of white racists in virginia, which is a highly racist state despite what you think about gentility at that time because of the fact he saw himself as white with as they were, and he thought he was from as good a family as any of them and especially the poor people around his farm who gave him money. do you know where i'm from? i'm from that. that's the plantation right there. part of that is mine. that's where i was born. this is my father. so in wahl's sense, too, you see this indignation in them partly because of many reasons, educated people. also because we have this -- they have -- they were partly white. they had lived close enough to white people, and they had begun

. >> steven wahl's mother's undertaker testifies, and it's a white undertaker. one thing that he says is addition i definitely thought steven wahl's mother was black because her corpse smelled black. just completely absurd. >> we say that -- we sigh to that, and we should. understand that this mentality, this jim crow mentality, it invaded our very senses. people believed at that time that you could touch -- you can discern black skin by touching it. that blacks had sort of a different aura and odor. a completely different temperament, and this was enshrined actually in the cannon of law. you sit there reading this, and you watch the judge just say these things over and over. so you see steven would -- the other thing i want to say, is i can identify with steven wahl. my family's not that grand. my great-grandfather missed being born a slave by 90 days. he was conceived in a relationship between a slavemaster and his mother, who was an enslaved woman. just barely born free. and he was a -- he was a pistol of a guy. the one thing about him was he didn't really ta