I really feel like this is such an important story of racial healing in America, ... Somebody thought they had to leave their family to make this marriage work, and then to be fully received -- it was just a miracle, really.

I was laying down in my bedroom and I heard a loud boom. But I thought it was my son. So I yelled Javier, Javier! But he didn't answer. So I got up and it was full of smoke and I wanted to fall.

I said, 'I'm her daughter,' ... She was flabbergasted.

That's her on the line,

My mom had said if I was going to do this and if I found somebody, to tell them she was dead because she couldn't face them after all these years,

You know, it was an amazing thing from my own perspective, ... I appear white. When you had mixed-race children in those days, you took your black father's identity. So it was a little strange to be sitting there with this white couple and they were my aunt and uncle.