A 75-year-old 'African American' woman appeared on UK breakfast show Good Morning Britain to talk about the moment she discovered she was actually biologically white.
Despite being much lighter than both her parents, Verda Byrd never once doubted her race.
The Texas native made the discovery just five years ago in October of 2013, following a quest to find her birth parents, Daisy and Earl Beagle.
In this very candid interview, Verda Byrd opens up about the life-changing discovery:Byrd documented the quest to find her birth parents in her book, Seventy Years of Blackness, which was made available earlier this year.
Unfortunately, she never got to meet her birth parents but did manage to track down her biological siblings in 2014. Needless to say, they didn't turn out quite how she'd expected. In fact, it was the moment she met her white siblings that she learned her true ethnicity.
Although Byrd, born Jeanette Beagle, had been made aware at the age of 10 that she was adopted at a very young age - she had no idea that she came from a white family.
With the help of an adoptive investigator, Byrd discovered some old documents and paperwork which confirmed that that was, indeed, the case.
"It’s a mental thing – how do I except what these words on this paper are saying," she said on Good Morning Britain. "Mentally, it’s an acceptance of what you are and what you didn’t know you were. But it hasn’t changed me because I still love me!"
According to news.com.au, Byrd spoke about how her "mother took me to a black hairdresser, and I grew up participating in Martin Luther King marches and eating soul food."
"My life was completely immersed in black culture, and why wouldn’t it be? For all intents and purposes, I was black," she added.
When asked by the show's hosts about how she now identifies, the 75-year-old replied: "I identify basically as whatever you want me to be. It doesn’t matter."
