Terry Gross

Last spring, when the news broke that the newly elected pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, journalist SUSAN SAULNY recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it. Her grandfather, George was a Black bricklayer who raised his children in New Orleans. George’s brother, Edward, was Black too, but light enough to leave for Chicago in the early 1920s and start a new life as a white man.

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. Her new book is called "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me."

Rollins, who died May 25, had for decades been hailed as the greatest living jazz musician. Kevin Whitehead offers an appreciation, and we listen back to Rollins' 1994 interview with Terry Gross.