Author Discovers Her Lost Black Heritage

Growing up in Bellevue, the youngest of three siblings, Barbara Hilyer knew little about her successful attorney father’s background. It wasn’t until nine years after Gale Pillsbury Hilyer Jr.’s death by suicide in 1979 that Barbara learned about her roots and her Black heritage. She’s now made that quest for identity into a book.

Back then Barbara was teaching public school in Ashland, Oregon. While on her way to vacation in British Canada, she stopped off in Seattle to visit her ex-stepmother, Marie Hilyer. When Barbara complained she was getting dark blotches on her cheeks and intended to see a dermatologist, Marie asked, “Don’t you know about your background?” Marie then revealed that Barbara’s family had African-American roots.

Barbara was stunned into wondering: How had she not known? And where was the rest of the family? Marie helpfully recalled that Gale Hilyer, Barbara’s father, had a sister, Hele’ne. Living in Hilo, Hawai’i, Hele’ne Hilyer Hale achieved political success as Hawaii’s first woman mayor. Ebony magazine ran her picture on the cover. (You can still Google that cover picture today.)

Barbara and Marie arranged a trip to Hawaii to meet Hele’ne and learn more about the family background. Hele’ne was living as an African-American woman in Hawai’i where being of mixed race is no obstacle. Hele’ne said it wasn’t race but gender that she had to overcome while serving four terms in the state legislature.

Inspired by her accomplished aunt, Barbara began a long quest to piece together the family story. She began her pursuit looking into old records in Minnesota, Washington D.C., and at Howard University where many family members were educated. Eventually, advised by her cousin Skip Harris, Barbara undertook trips looking for ancestors in the Deep South.

Her extended research enabled Barbara to trace her lineage back through six generations. She tells of that quest in her recently published book, Legacy Lost: Passing Across the Color Line. She found slaves and slave owners, black businessmen, women property owners, developers, engineers, inventors, nurses, educators, musicians, lawyers, and legislators and even a possible link to slaves at Mount Vernon.

Among her immediate forbears Barbara discovered three generations of lawyers and judges. The Hilyers had a proud history, one of education and accomplishment. Born Black but fair-skinned, some of her relatives — like Barbara’s own father — were born Black but later identified as white. The concept of “passing across color lines” is not something Barbara believes should be judged by today’s standards since it often was “what it took to be successful at the time.”

Barbara says that she has come to believe that — “in spite of everything” — her dad was a great father and that he had concealed his background for his kids’ future. Many years after he died, Barbara and her brother Bruce Hilyer encountered their dad’s old law partner on a Seattle street. She says, “It was awkward when the partner mentioned he’d heard ‘some crazy story about Gale being a negro’ but he didn’t ask any questions.” Out of respect for their father’s decision, they didn’t disillusion his law partner.

I was able to meet with Barbara and talk about her book as the author made a recent trip to Seattle from her home in Portland. She is now retired after years of teaching public school, but remains an engaging presence, tall and stately, and full of good humor. She has conducted readings in bookstores around Oregon and on Orcas Island and in Sun Valley, but hasn’t yet landed a presentation in Seattle. Her informative and revelatory book is sometimes difficult to locate but copies can be ordered through Amazon, Walmart, or bookshop.org.

Barbara recounts some amazing stories in her book. One involved a trip to Montgomery, Ala., where she and her brother Bruce, along with their cousin Skip, successfully installed a plaque honoring a great-great-grandfather, Charles Oscar Harris. After studying at Oberlin College in Ohio and Howard University, Charles Harris had returned home to Montgomery and served a single two-year term in the Alabama State Legislature during Reconstruction. Afterwards he was appointed Chief Clerk at the Montgomery Post Office, serving under seven presidents. The plaque citing his achievements was erected on the 200^th anniversary of Alabama statehood.

The author also relates tales of strong women relatives including a great-grand-aunt, Jennie Virginia Hilyer, who took nurse’s training at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., rising to become that hospital’s superintendent of nursing. Jennie later headed nurses’ training at Florida State Agricultural and Mechanical University. The FAMU hospital, the only facility available to black people, treated people of all races in the Tallahasee area. As Barbara says: “I want to broadcast her achievements — the daughter of a slave, who grew up in the years after the Civil War, before women had the right to vote, has a building named after her in the Deep South.”

Barbara’s book reports on the long struggle for Civil Rights across her family’s history. Among those who challenged racist laws and made contributions was that same Charles O. Harris. He joined others testing their rights under the 1875 Civil Rights Act to “the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of public amusement.” (The Supreme Court later found that act unconstitutional; equal rights had to await protection until the 1965 Civil Rights Act.)

As a long-time teacher of history, Barbara believes American history has been whitewashed. She laments that it is often taught as a narrative that leaps from one war to the next with little about intervening years. Students, she says, are given “a very narrow, very male, very Anglo-Saxon perspective.” She is convinced of a need to talk about race — the elephant in the room — and about identity and opportunity and the impact that our history has on present day lives. She says, “The times call for truth telling.”