This Family Tree Twined in Color

As an adopted child, Debbie Adams wanted to know her past.

She found her biological parents 25 years ago but decided not to stop there, tracing her heritage back to great-great-great-great grandfather Reuben Stephens, a South Carolina plantation owner.

Hundreds of miles away in Leesburg, Fla., Bettye Stevens Coney had taken a similar interest in her family’s history. The former school principal traced her lineage to a slave named Judy, who was owned by Stephens and gave birth to a child with one of his sons.

Judy’s son, Daniel Stephens, later became a free man and from there, two branches of the Stephens family tree -- one black, one white -- diverged, only to be reunited nearly 150 years later through the Internet.

Many Americans have become fascinated with exploring their family histories and have been aided in their searches by the proliferation of genealogy websites. Their research, along with the highly publicized relationship between Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings, is slowly leading to an increased awareness of interracial family trees.

With a hug and a kiss on the cheek, Stevens Coney and Adams recently reconnected their family, a reunion witnessed by students at Dodge Intermediate School in northeast Ohio, where Adams teaches.

As educators, the two women chose the school for their meeting to give the students an appreciation of cultural diversity. Moments before their meeting, the auditorium full of children of many races chattered excitedly about anything other than the weighty subject of race relations.

When the distant cousins embraced on stage to the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the students erupted in applause.

Stevens Coney’s message to the students was simple: Respect one another regardless of color.

“There are hundreds of other cousins out there. What I want you to remember if nothing else is: We’re all connected,” she said. “Why mistreat another for the sake of that person not being like you? That person could be part of your unidentified bloodline.”

Twinsburg is a mixed Cleveland suburb that has seen racial tension at times, including when a former school superintendent commented that the district had a higher suspension rate of black students because a higher proportion of them came from disadvantaged homes.

Students at Dodge Intermediate, though, say they’re just as apt to play football or sit in the cafeteria with a student of a different color.

Terrence Kidd, who spent part of the assembly reading a Lemony Snicket book, said there were exceptions.

“Some kids in school are racist,” said Terrence, a black sixth-grader, who complained about one student in particular.

His friend, Terance Rutkar, who is white, added, “I hate racist people.”

In Adams’ sixth-grade classroom, Jade Walker, 11, said she enjoyed seeing her teacher reunited with her cousin. The lesson, though, wasn’t a new one for her.

“I already know that blacks and whites shouldn’t disrespect each other,” she said.

Adams, 45, is easygoing, yet firm with her students, an approach she spent years developing as a bus driver before getting her teaching degree.

She was troubled when she learned that her ancestors owned slaves. At the same time, she embraced the possibility that she might have black cousins.

“It’s sort of the like the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson story among common folk,” Adams said. “There’s nothing huge and incredible. We’re not famous or from highly political backgrounds, but our story isn’t a whole lot different.”

Adams and Stevens Coney first spoke by telephone five years ago after being introduced by another cousin, Yolanda Mitchell of California, whom Adams reached through a posting on a genealogy website.

Adams and Mitchell together examined their ancestry and talked about their racial backgrounds. Adams said that when she later spoke to Stevens Coney, 64, the subject didn’t really matter “because we’re family.”

“It wasn’t awkward. It was a really neat feeling. It was exciting to make connections,” Adams said.

Art Thomas, a volunteer with AfriGeneas, a nonprofit group that helps people document their family histories, said cases like those of Stevens Coney and Adams are becoming more common.

“The more research being done, the more you’re going to run into that kind of situation and be able to document the interracial relations in the past as a fact,” he said. “It would be nice if folks could embrace their heritage regardless of where it takes them.”

Although there was nothing good about slavery, Stevens Coney said her great uncle, Essie, told her that the Stephens family did show some humanity by educating her ancestors Judy and Daniel.

Stevens Coney, whose surname was changed from Stephens generations later, hopes that others see the humanity in her reunion with her cousin.

Adams said it was the little similarities she shared with her newfound cousin that she found remarkable, such as their common pursuit of a career in education. Another similarity is that both have reddish hair.

The cousins plan to remain in touch and will see each other at a Stephens family reunion in July in Walterboro, S.C.