This is an opinion column.

In a recent Barbershop, my weekly newsletter (sign up here—yes, shameless plug) I shared an item about two sisters from Deerfield, Illinois. One was Black, the other white.

They didn’t meet until both women were adults. They didn’t meet because the white parents who adopted the young Black girl gave her up for re-adoption amid the heated tensions embroiling Deerfield over a proposed housing community where the developer wanted to sell 12 of the planned 51 homes to Black families.

It was 1962. They named the girl Rebecca. (The couple said they didn’t know she was Black until her skin began darkening soon after they brought the infant home.)

Not much later they adopted Amy.

The white girl might never have known about her Black “sister” had not her two brothers chided the tomboyish Amy for not being a “real girl” like their “other sister.”

Amy soon asked her mother: Did I have a sister?

“I’m only going to tell you this story once,” Amy’s mother told her. This story shocked the 8-year-old.

Len and Marge Sandberg struggled over whether to keep Rebecca. Marge had bonded with the baby and wanted to still raise her. Len, though, didn’t think doing so would be safe (for the family) or fair to the baby.

They returned her and adopted Amy—whose name is now Amy Roost. There was a warm resolution to the story: As an adult, Amy combed through birth records and the Internet seeking out “Rebecca.” She found her, now named Angelle Kimberly Smith.

Roost reached out, not knowing what to expect. Here’s what transpired, courtesy of The Seattle Times. Today, Deerfield is 92 percent white.

My item triggered a reader. “It floored me,” wrote Glenn Ross, who’d grown up in Deerfield yet knew nothing of the racial tension that ripped apart a family and a town.

Here’s what Glenn shared:

I was adopted at the age of one in 1966 by my parents. They were married in 1960 and moved from Chicago to Deerfield sometime between 1962 and 1964. I lived there until 1980.

I went to Wilmot Elementary and St Gregory’s Episcopal that surrounded Mitchell Park. Father Parker was senior minister.

My mom sang in the choir with Mr. Mitchell, for whom I was told that the park was named.

We would go to the community pool in the park all the time.

The whole time growing up in Deerfield I never heard anything nor was taught anything about this racist history.

It explains why there were no Black children in elementary school. One Black girl in junior high. The same Black girl, two Black boys, and one Polynesian boy during my one year at Deerfield High School.

This whole history has me questioning the hearts of so many of the adults that I knew as a child.

I remember the news about the Nazi group in nearby Skokie in the late 1970′s. Yet, I was totally clueless about the injustices and racists in my own backyard.

Thank you for sharing this history.

Glenn Ross now lives in Homewood, AL.

I’m a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj