Latest / Stories That Live In Us / New York: A Melting Pot of Resilience (with Scott Pratt) | Episode 108

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New York: A Melting Pot of Resilience (with Scott Pratt) | Episode 108 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Scott Pratt: Got the letter and in my mind I'm thinking, wow, this is either gonna go really, really well, or it's gonna reveal something about me and my family that's not, you know, it that I'm gonna have to atone for, right?
• 0:14
  Scott Pratt: And I was prepared for either one of those scenarios because again, I had fallen in love with everybody that was at the show, you know.
• 0:20
  Scott Pratt: I mean, so I got the letter and I wasn't sure.
• 0:23
  Scott Pratt: And so, yes, it was probably it was uh it was a great shock.
• 0:29
  Scott Pratt: It was it was tremendous.
• 0:31
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:39
  Crista Cowan: I'm Krista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:43
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:54
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 1:03
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: In 2019, Ancestry took a group of six individuals to a church in Brooklyn, New York.
• 1:17
  Crista Cowan: Now, these individuals were descendants of formerly enslaved people and abolitionists who helped those enslaved people escape on the Underground Railroad.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: It was all part of a documentary that Ancestry filmed with Sundance, and it was called Railroad Ties.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: If you have not watched it yet, it's worth pausing right now and going to watch that video.
• 1:45
  Crista Cowan: You can find it on the Ancestry YouTube channel.
• 1:48
  Crista Cowan: Again, it's called Railroad Ties.
• 1:50
  Crista Cowan: I'll link it in the description here on the podcast, also on the YouTube video so that you can find it easily.
• 1:57
  Crista Cowan: But it is so heartwarming and it represented this kind of change in how Ancestry was telling stories.
• 2:07
  Crista Cowan: And the really beautiful thing about it is that the stories keep coming.
• 2:12
  Crista Cowan: It wasn't just that one documentary.
• 2:15
  Crista Cowan: Back in season one, I had one of the individuals who starred in that documentary on the podcast where she talked about her experience.
• 2:26
  Crista Cowan: And today I've invited another guest.
• 2:29
  Crista Cowan: Scott Pratt lives in the state of Washington, but his roots in the state of New York go deep.
• 2:36
  Crista Cowan: And while we could have told a million stories about the city of New York alone, much less the whole state, I think Scott's two sides of his family tree are pretty representative of what it means to be from New York.
• 2:52
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Scott Pratt.
• 2:55
  Crista Cowan: Well, Scott, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
• 2:58
  Crista Cowan: I feel like I know you because I've seen uh the documentary so many times.
• 3:03
  Crista Cowan: And I don't want to rehash uh the whole story because I really hope that people will go and watch it.
• 3:09
  Crista Cowan: But I would love to hear from you kind of what you were feeling or thinking when Ancestry very first reached out to you to participate in that film.
• 3:20
  Scott Pratt: Well, it's kind of a little bit of a funny story because it really was my father who was reached out to first.
• 3:25
  Scott Pratt: And, you know, because of all my years of uh talking during public speaking, he said, you know, why don't you go and represent our family?
• 3:32
  Scott Pratt: He had no idea, and he had all kinds of you know thoughts about you know what what this could all be about.
• 3:39
  Scott Pratt: And you know, we ran through, you know, like everybody does.
• 3:42
  Scott Pratt: It was like a game of clue.
• 3:43
  Scott Pratt: Who, you know, was it Mr.
• 3:45
  Scott Pratt: Mustard in the in the kitchen, right?
• 3:46
  Scott Pratt: You know, and my dad had just convinced himself that you know it was our our Scottish roots and our Scottish heritage, and you know, be looking for in any sign of Alexander Hamilton.
• 3:58
  Scott Pratt: And it was just it was like I went with a totally different perception of what the whole story was going to be about, obviously.
• 4:07
  Scott Pratt: But I mean, I was still excited, and you know, my my mom's family is from Brooklyn.
• 4:12
  Scott Pratt: I went to Long Island every weekend, so you know it was exciting to go home.
• 4:17
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, it's like a trip home.
• 4:19
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:20
  Crista Cowan: So, as you think about kind of growing up, what you knew about your family history or how you identified as far as your heritage goes.
• 4:26
  Crista Cowan: Uh, you mentioned Scottish.
• 4:27
  Crista Cowan: What else did that look like?
• 4:30
  Scott Pratt: Well, the funny part is that if you could imagine, I grew up in a very matriarchal family.
• 4:34
  Scott Pratt: My Italian grandmother and my Italian great-grandmother pretty much ran the show.
• 4:38
  Scott Pratt: I had a lovely Japanese grandfather, but you know, he would they they called him the babe, you know, and he was pre-ma manager.
• 4:45
  Scott Pratt: So, like my family was about getting cannolis and, you know, hey, babe, go down to the local corner store in Long Island, and you know, and they were all from Brooklyn with the very thick accents, and you know, they just made sure we were every weekend there was soccer, go to grandma's house for you know, raviolis and sausage.
• 5:03
  Scott Pratt: And so I just grew up that way.
• 5:05
  Scott Pratt: You know, I mean I even took in high school, I would see all prep in West Orange, New Jersey.
• 5:10
  Scott Pratt: You know, I even took Italian, and the the teacher would go through the list and he'd go, Di Giovanni, DeSantos, Pratt, what are you doing in this class?
• 5:17
  Scott Pratt: And I'm like, Loop, we've been doing this for three years now, like, you know, but the class, right?
• 5:22
  Scott Pratt: So uh my life was just, you know, I was kind of felt like I was just a, you know, just an Italian kid from Jersey, right?
• 5:31
  Scott Pratt: You know, with this, you know, my grandmother still spoke a little bit of Italian.
• 5:35
  Scott Pratt: I studied Italian for her and my grand great grandmother.
• 5:39
  Scott Pratt: And my dad was just kind of his side of the family, it was just yes, we're Scottish, but it was very quiet.
• 5:45
  Scott Pratt: So we didn't really know a whole lot.
• 5:47
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 5:48
  Crista Cowan: And that last name, Pratt, like Pratt has very deep colonial roots in New England, right?
• 5:54
  Crista Cowan: But but that Scottish identity, I think, is a lot of is strong in a lot of people.
• 5:59
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:00
  Scott Pratt: Well, my dad had kind of made all the ties and the weaving of the story.
• 6:03
  Scott Pratt: We went to a lot of uh what with once we graduated high school, we went to a lot of uh the Celtic festivals with the cabertoss and everything else like that.
• 6:12
  Scott Pratt: And he would wear a kilt.
• 6:14
  Scott Pratt: And I know like we're related to Ace of Pratt in a way, and you're very right.
• 6:18
  Scott Pratt: It's very colonial.
• 6:20
  Scott Pratt: I mean, it's very, very colonial.
• 6:22
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Scott Pratt: Rattleboro, Vermont.
• 6:24
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 6:25
  Crista Cowan: I may have some Pratt's in my own family tree.
• 6:28
  Scott Pratt: So we're related.
• 6:30
  Crista Cowan: We could be, it's totally possible.
• 6:32
  Scott Pratt: As we would say, as we would say at my grandmother's house, you're a paisana.
• 6:36
  Crista Cowan: Well, I wish I was related to the Italian side, because no Italian at all here.
• 6:41
  Crista Cowan: Well, the filming brought you to a historic location in Brooklyn and and you having connections to Brooklyn, like that feeling of going home, I suspect.
• 6:51
  Crista Cowan: But when you first walked into that particular building, right?
• 6:55
  Crista Cowan: Had you been there before?
• 6:56
  Crista Cowan: Was there any feeling of connection or identification at all?
• 7:01
  Scott Pratt: No, um, like I said, you know, like I mean, I knew that my mom was born in Bensonhurst and she was from, you know, she was from Brooklyn.
• 7:08
  Scott Pratt: She actually went to high school with, I think it was either Lenny or Squeegee from Laverne and Shirley.
• 7:13
  Scott Pratt: And, you know, I mean, like, you know, like we we were in the city all the time, you know.
• 7:18
  Scott Pratt: Um, and then because my dad, you know, my mom and dad met in Northeastern, you know, we went to, you know, um the north end and we were in the churches.
• 7:26
  Scott Pratt: So I kind of had a feel for those churches before it really wasn't about that.
• 7:31
  Scott Pratt: The sense that I got like immediately when I was there was just, I don't know, the warmth of everybody that was there and everything.
• 7:37
  Scott Pratt: But when we got into the church, you know, it had that same feeling of like, you know, the churches where Paul Revere was.
• 7:44
  Scott Pratt: And so I obviously was looking for, I'm looking in the stained glass, kind of thinking like I'm up in Boston.
• 7:49
  Scott Pratt: Am I gonna see Alexander Hamilton here?
• 7:52
  Scott Pratt: And I keep walking around and asking everybody, hey, do you have any relation to Alexander Hamilton?
• 7:57
  Scott Pratt: And they're all looking at me like, who is this guy?
• 8:00
  Scott Pratt: What are you talking about?
• 8:02
  Scott Pratt: This we don't have a relationship to Alexander Hamilton.
• 8:05
  Scott Pratt: So I just decided to just enjoy my time and get to know everybody, and they were just such amazing people.
• 8:11
  Scott Pratt: I was probably a little bit of a comedian because I was just I didn't know where else to, you know, I didn't know where I fit into this whole storyline.
• 8:19
  Scott Pratt: You know, Seth was pretty much really quickly like identified, but I was like, you know, am I the protagonist?
• 8:27
  Scott Pratt: I mean, like, where where do I fit it?
• 8:28
  Scott Pratt: Where where am I woven into this story?
• 8:31
  Scott Pratt: You know, and going to high school and growing up in Jersey, and you know, I mean, where I grew up, you were Italian, black, or Irish, right?
• 8:38
  Scott Pratt: So like nobody sat and uh I don't mean to go off on a tangent, but I was listening to somebody talk about it, and they were like, you know, they were lighter skinned, you know, they were a lighter skinned person, and they were like, you know, I just decided to put that aside in my life now, right?
• 8:53
  Scott Pratt: And I'm not done with going to high school and like, you know, am I gonna sit at the table with with my black friends?
• 8:58
  Scott Pratt: But so I'm just sitting at my own table, right?
• 9:01
  Scott Pratt: And I thought it was really inspiring to listen to somebody talk about it that way.
• 9:05
  Scott Pratt: And I I think growing up in New Jersey the way that I did, and with such really gracious parents that were just open to everyone, I guess I felt like my whole life, I just sat at the table.
• 9:18
  Crista Cowan: That's really beautifully said.
• 9:19
  Crista Cowan: I love the sentiment behind that.
• 9:21
  Crista Cowan: And so here you find yourself sitting in this church in Brooklyn, and a story is being told about African American history, and there's this moment where you're getting ready to read a letter that's going to reveal to you your part in this story.
• 9:36
  Crista Cowan: What were you feeling in the moments leading up to that?
• 9:41
  Scott Pratt: Do you want the candid answer?
• 9:42
  Scott Pratt: Absolutely.
• 9:43
  Scott Pratt: You might laugh, it might be a little bit, a little bit controversial.
• 9:48
  Scott Pratt: Um, because I mean, honestly, like I said, I have this Japanese background, this Italian background, it all came through Ellis Island.
• 9:55
  Scott Pratt: You know, I'm kind of like I'm a kind of American apple pie, right?
• 9:59
  Scott Pratt: And here I am, like you said, and right before the story, one of my buddies had called me and said, you know, you do know there's always a, you know, there's always the antagonist or the person in the reveal shows.
• 10:10
  Scott Pratt: And I'm I kind of honestly, I gotta be honest, I got the letter, and in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, this is either gonna go really, really well, or it's gonna reveal something about me and my family that's not, you know, it that I'm gonna have to atone for, right?
• 10:27
  Scott Pratt: And I was prepared for either one of those scenarios because again, I had fallen in love with everybody that was at the show, you know.
• 10:33
  Scott Pratt: I mean, so I got the letter and I wasn't sure.
• 10:36
  Scott Pratt: And so, yes, it was probably it was uh it was a great shock.
• 10:42
  Scott Pratt: It was it was tremendous, yeah, yeah.
• 10:44
  Scott Pratt: Almost like to uh it was a mix of emotions.
• 10:49
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, I I still can actually visualize myself being in the room and having that letter in my hand, yeah.
• 10:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so for those who haven't seen the film, and again, I really like if you're listening to this, like hit pause, go find the link in the description, watch the film.
• 11:07
  Crista Cowan: It's super powerful.
• 11:08
  Crista Cowan: And I think if you watch it, you'll be able to see um like Scott's whole experience through this, um, and then come back and listen to the rest of our conversation.
• 11:19
  Crista Cowan: But if you don't want to do that, that's fine.
• 11:21
  Crista Cowan: Let's give you, let's get everybody caught up.
• 11:23
  Crista Cowan: Um, the particular film is about um individuals who are descendants of a group of people who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad.
• 11:34
  Crista Cowan: And this church that you're sitting in in Brooklyn, Scott, it's a it's a stop on the Underground Railroad.
• 11:40
  Crista Cowan: And what you were thinking was: were you the descendant of people who enslaved these people?
• 11:46
  Crista Cowan: Were you descendants of people who were chasing these people?
• 11:48
  Crista Cowan: Like, like, what was your role there in that thing?
• 11:53
  Crista Cowan: And what was it that was revealed to you?
• 11:56
  Scott Pratt: Um, my role is that I'm a descendant of African slaves and and uh a very, very powerful story, um, an exciting story, something that has uplifted in my life a lot and had a lot of rippling effects all over my, you know, the and it's totally has fingerprints all over my life at this point.
• 12:16
  Scott Pratt: Um, you know, the the the story, the the fact that they barely got through, and and thanks to a uh a ship captain was able to say that you know there was yellow fever on the on board.
• 12:28
  Scott Pratt: And so the inspectors didn't even get on the boat.
• 12:31
  Scott Pratt: They let them go right through the, you know, right through the through to Brooklyn.
• 12:34
  Scott Pratt: The fact that, you know, New York at the time was still very pro-slavery because they were benefiting off of the goods that were coming off through New York.
• 12:42
  Scott Pratt: Most people don't know that.
• 12:43
  Scott Pratt: And, you know, instantaneously, like my whole, every my whole life changed in like seconds, you know, like and I could imagine what she was going through.
• 12:53
  Scott Pratt: I was a powerful moment.
• 12:55
  Crista Cowan: And New York City plays such a pivotal role in this story, right?
• 12:58
  Crista Cowan: Because here you are in Brooklyn filming this.
• 13:00
  Crista Cowan: You're coming to learn about this church now through an entirely different set of eyes when you realize you have a three times great-grandmother and her children who were, you know, escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.
• 13:13
  Crista Cowan: This church played such a critical role in that.
• 13:15
  Crista Cowan: But Brooklyn, Manhattan, like there's a tension at the time between those places.
• 13:21
  Crista Cowan: And Brooklyn was a lot more progressive at the time, yeah.
• 13:25
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, that's pretty much it.
• 13:26
  Scott Pratt: And, you know, I mean, again, remember my perspective where I was coming from is, you know, I've got a my mom was born in Brooklyn, right?
• 13:34
  Scott Pratt: She met my dad in Northeastern, you know, in in Massachusetts, which is great, but that's where they finally ended up.
• 13:40
  Scott Pratt: And then, you know, my great-grandfather on my mom's side, you know, he was Japanese, so he came through Brooklyn, and now Sophia's in Brooklyn.
• 13:48
  Scott Pratt: So, like, I kind of have this very different Brooklyn has like, you know, a little bit in my heart now.
• 13:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:56
  Crista Cowan: No, I think that's but that's that's the reality, is that these places played such a critical role in the stories of the lives of our ancestors, and for Sophia and her children, this was the this was the beginning of freedom for them.
• 14:12
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 14:12
  Scott Pratt: And so that that that changed of, you know, as you do know, like she was a very light-skinned black woman, right?
• 14:21
  Scott Pratt: So the passing for white really started very early for my family, you know, and um, you know, it's it's brought good things and it's brought bad things, you know.
• 14:32
  Scott Pratt: I mean, it um it's heartbreaking in some ways and uh uh uplifting in other ways, but the the power and the strength and kind of the endurance, the resiliency, that's the best word for it, the resiliency that these women had uh to get themselves up into Massachusetts.
• 14:52
  Scott Pratt: And I think the thing that was the most powerful for me being at the church, you know, when we were downstairs, just the unbearable conditions that were, you know, uh uh thrust upon these people was just it's unimaginable.
• 15:06
  Crista Cowan: So your great great-grandmother was the child that escaped with her mother Sophia, and and like that's not that long ago, really, in time.
• 15:16
  Scott Pratt: No, no.
• 15:17
  Scott Pratt: Marietta, you know, she if she died in 1931 and I was born in 1971, you know, when you put those things into historical perspective, which most people don't have that frame of mind, that is that is nothing.
• 15:34
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, right.
• 15:35
  Scott Pratt: You know, that's that's basically uh for me, this was, you know, like I said, it was uplifting and obviously um you know, there's a lot to learn.
• 15:45
  Scott Pratt: There was a lot, there's a lot to unpackage in all of that storyline, you know.
• 15:49
  Scott Pratt: But I, you know, at the time when it was going on, I was just excited.
• 15:54
  Scott Pratt: I was excited about this new heritage coming from a family of, like I said, you know, with Japanese descent and Italian descent and you know, strong colonial descent, you know.
• 16:05
  Scott Pratt: Um I embraced it.
• 16:08
  Scott Pratt: It was very exciting to me.
• 16:10
  Scott Pratt: And something I was very, very proud of, uh, which translated, like I said, into many, many different aspects of my life after that.
• 16:18
  Scott Pratt: But then there was also the there was also a lot of realizations that come along with that, you know, yeah, that that most people don't have to go through.
• 16:28
  Scott Pratt: I'm on a very personal level and uh professional level, and also what I think is really interesting is is that it's it's sometimes almost very hard, it's hard to communicate with people about it because I'm one respect, you know, I never had to endure what the other people in the group, you know, CC and all those people who I love to death, right?
• 16:53
  Scott Pratt: You know, and like that was something that was not in my narrative, right?
• 16:57
  Scott Pratt: Um so I don't ever want to take away from their experience, I don't ever want to feel like, you know, and I have a deeper respect, right?
• 17:06
  Scott Pratt: Not that I was unaware of it before.
• 17:08
  Scott Pratt: I grew up in a family that was very educated, you know, so I knew, but we had compassion and empathy, but it's deeper now.
• 17:14
  Scott Pratt: But on the same token, when you talk about the pride of it, certain people on certain sides they didn't take well to it.
• 17:23
  Scott Pratt: So it was very um in fact, I have a very a very nice young woman who after she saw the documentary, she was so moved and inspired, she called me and she said, I don't mean to be strange about this or anything, but I've gone through the exact same experience that you have.
• 17:41
  Scott Pratt: Uh, I I'm hoping that I can share what I went through to be a support mechanism for you through this whole process.
• 17:49
  Scott Pratt: And we're still friends today.
• 17:51
  Scott Pratt: In fact, I spoke to her this morning and told her what was going on, and she was so thrilled for me, and she was so excited that I was going to get to share it.
• 17:58
  Scott Pratt: And honestly, Krista, like you reaching out to me and letting me be an ambassador for Brooklyn, an ambassador for the Grays, an ambassador for this whole program in ancestry.com, it gives me a forum to be proud.
• 18:11
  Crista Cowan: I mean, you've had obviously now years to kind of think about this and process it and come to understand what it means for you.
• 18:17
  Crista Cowan: But that first night, after hearing this news as you sat there, like what what were you thinking?
• 18:23
  Crista Cowan: Like you were raised having zero knowledge of Sophia and Marietta and the fact that that this was really close in your family tree.
• 18:34
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 18:34
  Scott Pratt: Um sadness.
• 18:38
  Scott Pratt: Um my grandfather, and I don't mean to keep I don't mean to distract from Marietta, but there's a there's a prevalence between the two fan the two sides of my family, the whole Brooklyn story.
• 18:54
  Scott Pratt: You're kind of choking me up a little bit.
• 18:56
  Scott Pratt: So um growing in a house where my grandfather was called the babe, he was the most loved man, you know, ever, right?
• 19:07
  Crista Cowan: But it was and was he just of Japanese descent or was he a Japanese immigrant?
• 19:12
  Scott Pratt: No, he was of Japanese descent.
• 19:13
  Scott Pratt: Okay, his great my great my my um John Sasa, his father, came here and was, you know, a tailor in in New York.
• 19:22
  Scott Pratt: They were very well to do, you know, they had very different kind of my grandfather's name was actually a Kuro, it wasn't Warren, but he changed it to be Americanized.
• 19:32
  Scott Pratt: He saw normal, you know, he was you know in the United States militaries and everything else like that.
• 19:39
  Scott Pratt: Um but because of what happened with the concentration camps and the the stigma the Japanese had during the war, it was almost like that part of my family was erased.
• 19:50
  Scott Pratt: And so with the last name of Sasa, which sounded a little bit of Italian, nobody really questioned it.
• 19:57
  Scott Pratt: He was the babe, he was so loved, he was the babe, he'd hang around to have both sides of my family be erased in a certain way.
• 20:07
  Scott Pratt: Um and it was erased, and there's a lot of family stuff that we're processing as a family together going through this, you know, because there's a lot of details of it, you know, that we're all trying to kind of come to grips with it was heartbreaking.
• 20:25
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Scott Pratt: And I've had to make up with it for a lot of lost time.
• 20:28
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:29
  Scott Pratt: Well, ways and outlets.
• 20:31
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:32
  Crista Cowan: So as you've as you've tried to process this, like there's another character who's kind of emerged in this story, which is Marietta's son Frank.
• 20:41
  Crista Cowan: And tell us what you've learned about him and his life.
• 20:45
  Scott Pratt: So my great-grandfather, Frank, you know, Frank Albion Andrews, he was a, you know, he's a silent movie star.
• 20:50
  Scott Pratt: He was in movies with with uh Mary Hickford, I think her name was.
• 20:55
  Scott Pratt: And um, you know, she was famous at the time.
• 20:58
  Scott Pratt: This was not as he was not in small roles by any stretch of the imagination.
• 21:02
  Scott Pratt: He actually has his own acting page that you can actually go and look on.
• 21:05
  Scott Pratt: If so, I mean, over the years, people have reached out to me and um wanted to know more about Frank.
• 21:11
  Scott Pratt: And I've learned, and you know, I I've watched, like, I've seen pictures of him and seen the colorization that's happened.
• 21:19
  Scott Pratt: And um some of the folks that were part of this, you know, the ancestry talked about colorization and you know, what that experience was like, you know, for them, because they were lighter skinned.
• 21:32
  Scott Pratt: And, you know, um, but the most exciting part was just when one of the guys, one of the person who was doing a thesis, he was doing his doctoral thesis, um, had uncovered the fact that my, you know, Frank's journal about passing for white in America is at the Harvard Library.
• 21:51
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 21:51
  Crista Cowan: So Sophia and Marietta escaped through Brooklyn.
• 21:54
  Crista Cowan: They made their way up to Massachusetts, yes?
• 21:56
  Scott Pratt: Correct.
• 21:57
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 21:57
  Crista Cowan: Okay, but Frank finds himself back.
• 21:59
  Crista Cowan: In New York at some point.
• 22:01
  Crista Cowan: So he was raised.
• 22:03
  Crista Cowan: He was raised identifying as mulatto, I think, from the censuses is what we learn.
• 22:09
  Crista Cowan: But by the time he gets back to New York, now he's in the big city.
• 22:13
  Crista Cowan: He's back in a place where he can kind of reinvent himself and he starts passing as white when he is in New York.
• 22:20
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Scott Pratt: That's my understanding.
• 22:22
  Scott Pratt: That's my understanding.
• 22:23
  Scott Pratt: And that's what the journal kind of describes, because obviously he wouldn't be able to get movie roles, you know, the kind of movie roles that he wanted to have, unless he could have passed for white.
• 22:34
  Crista Cowan: He doesn't just embrace the lightness that allows him to pass for white.
• 22:38
  Crista Cowan: Like he marries an Irish woman.
• 22:41
  Scott Pratt: Right.
• 22:41
  Scott Pratt: Right.
• 22:42
  Scott Pratt: Right.
• 22:43
  Crista Cowan: And yet you're telling me this whole time, and this is fascinating to me, this whole time, he's keeping a journal about his experience passing.
• 22:52
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Crista Cowan: So he's not completely abandoning his heritage.
• 22:56
  Crista Cowan: He's just having it.
• 22:58
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 22:58
  Scott Pratt: No, it it's it's very clear, like I said, and and when I look at the movie, you know, like the different kinds of uh photography that captures his likeness.
• 23:09
  Scott Pratt: Sometimes it's very dark and you can tell that he's black.
• 23:12
  Scott Pratt: And then other times it's it's basically washed out and colorized so that you can't tell.
• 23:17
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 23:17
  Scott Pratt: Wow.
• 23:18
  Scott Pratt: Wow.
• 23:19
  Crista Cowan: Um and he and Frank is your dad's grandfather.
• 23:25
  Scott Pratt: Yep.
• 23:25
  Crista Cowan: And your dad, your dad's no idea.
• 23:28
  Crista Cowan: Or at least your dad never told you.
• 23:30
  Crista Cowan: Did your dad know?
• 23:32
  Scott Pratt: Um, I don't, according to my dad, that he didn't know.
• 23:36
  Scott Pratt: Okay.
• 23:36
  Scott Pratt: Um, you know, and I don't want to speak too much out of turn, you know, because obviously that's his personal experience.
• 23:43
  Scott Pratt: I don't want to diminish him in any way, you know.
• 23:45
  Scott Pratt: There's no point at my dad is this brilliant man.
• 23:48
  Scott Pratt: I love my father to death, you know, love my mother to death.
• 23:51
  Scott Pratt: Um, I I will share the the from a family story one, and you know, he could be upset with me if he wants, you know, that he did he did grow an Afro in the 70s, and my understanding was that he was told to shave it off because it was racially insensitive.
• 24:05
  Scott Pratt: And this is coming from a man who my father was a I have to tell you, like my dad, uh my experience growing up, like I said, you know, he was a warrior, he was a race warrior.
• 24:18
  Scott Pratt: Um, my dad was the strongest man.
• 24:21
  Scott Pratt: My dad's six foot six.
• 24:23
  Scott Pratt: Whoa.
• 24:23
  Scott Pratt: And and whenever we hung out with black, you know, we had some black colleagues or whatever.
• 24:30
  Scott Pratt: If anybody said anything, that my dad would literally throw down like he was like it was a it was it was a fabric of who we were.
• 24:40
  Scott Pratt: So to even think that my dad would have, you know, any qualms about it, but it is, it's it's it's very different when it becomes this personal thing, and it's his mom and and his his grandfather, and you know, and the world, as much as we like to think the world has changed, we we all think it's changed.
• 25:01
  Scott Pratt: It really hasn't.
• 25:03
  Scott Pratt: There's a lot of underlying um, and I talked a lot about that.
• 25:08
  Scott Pratt: Um, Washington State is very unusual.
• 25:11
  Scott Pratt: I mean, they didn't want to run any like the whole the whole United States ran news stories about my family, right?
• 25:18
  Scott Pratt: They were so excited from New York, you know, we were on CBS, everybody, right?
• 25:22
  Scott Pratt: And Seattle didn't want to run it because they were afraid that maybe there was somebody in my family that was actually slave owners.
• 25:28
  Scott Pratt: And I'm like, I don't think Italian and Japanese were slave owners, right?
• 25:33
  Scott Pratt: You know, but okay, that's your consensus.
• 25:36
  Scott Pratt: Like there was this oversensitivity to it.
• 25:38
  Scott Pratt: Um, it's a very young area, it's not New York, you know.
• 25:42
  Scott Pratt: Like they have not caught up to where we are, you know, where we come from the melting pot.
• 25:46
  Scott Pratt: Where are you from, Krista?
• 25:48
  Crista Cowan: Um, I am a fifth generation Los Angelino on my dad's side, but deep colonial.
• 25:53
  Crista Cowan: The melting pot.
• 25:54
  Crista Cowan: Deep deep southern roots, yeah.
• 25:56
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, you get the melting pot.
• 25:58
  Scott Pratt: Like, you know, they haven't like assimilated here yet to that, but it's a you know, so and then you know, like I said, that and I noticed more things and people saying offhand in the comments.
• 26:09
  Scott Pratt: Uh least, you know, and so it's been uh um it's not it's we're not as progressive as we like to think we are.
• 26:18
  Scott Pratt: I mean, but that was not something that my that I ever observed in my family.
• 26:23
  Scott Pratt: My family both my mother and my father were champions of everyone, and that was a beautiful thing.
• 26:30
  Scott Pratt: So I guess in a way I inherited it, but I think now I've inherited a resiliency because this has been a challenge in certain circles in certain places.
• 26:45
  Scott Pratt: Um, I'm not accepted on either side of the coin.
• 26:48
  Scott Pratt: Does that make any sense?
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, explain.
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: I I think so, but explain it to me a little bit more what you mean.
• 26:55
  Scott Pratt: Um in certain company when I'm very proud of my African heritage, right?
• 27:01
  Crista Cowan: Like and of Sophia and her story, right?
• 27:04
  Scott Pratt: Right.
• 27:05
  Scott Pratt: And so, like, you know, I've been at like, you know, I was really great because one of my friends invited me over to like this Nigerian party, and I had goat for the first time, and I was so excited because like I'm a foodie, right?
• 27:16
  Scott Pratt: So I'm like, I'm eating goat and it's delicious, right?
• 27:19
  Scott Pratt: And I'm like, you gotta give me the respiratory, and they're dancing, and like again, it was they were African, and we were I they they included me and we were dancing, and it was like I'd never been at a party like this.
• 27:31
  Scott Pratt: We were just dancing for the sake of dancing.
• 27:33
  Scott Pratt: It wasn't like we were going to a club, they just played music and everybody's dancing, and it was fun.
• 27:38
  Scott Pratt: Um, and then I'm in certain other circles, and they're like, Well, he thinks he's black now, right?
• 27:43
  Scott Pratt: And it's like, man, I'm I'm not trying to hijack your experience, not in anything, but don't steal my pride.
• 27:52
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, don't steal the thing that I have something to be extraordinarily proud of.
• 27:56
  Scott Pratt: I encourage people that have this um cultural situation.
• 28:03
  Scott Pratt: We need to be more sensitive to each other in that regard.
• 28:08
  Scott Pratt: And remember, we're all humans, and we're all, you know, we we have a humanity that we have to protect.
• 28:13
  Scott Pratt: It's not about color, it's about who we are as human beings.
• 28:17
  Crista Cowan: So love the way that you've tried to incorporate this new part of your family story into your identity.
• 28:23
  Crista Cowan: I think that's amazing.
• 28:24
  Crista Cowan: It's also interesting.
• 28:26
  Crista Cowan: There's sometimes this thing that happens when people discover a new part of their story or a hidden part of their story.
• 28:32
  Crista Cowan: There's also sometimes a little bit of a feeling of loss.
• 28:35
  Crista Cowan: Like a loss of a loss of opportunity, a loss of connection, a loss of like like did you go through that?
• 28:43
  Crista Cowan: Are you still kind of dealing with that as well?
• 28:45
  Scott Pratt: I'm dealing with that, Krista.
• 28:46
  Scott Pratt: You nail that you you actually articulated thank you so much.
• 28:51
  Scott Pratt: Thank you so much.
• 28:53
  Scott Pratt: That was touching, thank you.
• 28:54
  Scott Pratt: You are you know, you articulated it better than I could ever articulate it.
• 28:59
  Scott Pratt: 100%.
• 28:59
  Scott Pratt: There's a loss, there's a grief, there's a missing of years, there's a missing of, like I said, you know, like um, you know, there's the stories about my about my you know, my grandmother's family, and you know, um, there's stories about John Sassa and his experience, you know.
• 29:21
  Scott Pratt: Um, I don't have any of that.
• 29:24
  Scott Pratt: Yeah.
• 29:24
  Scott Pratt: And so yeah, there's a grief, there's a loss, there's a there's a hole.
• 29:28
  Scott Pratt: Um and I have been trying to fill it.
• 29:32
  Scott Pratt: Honestly, I have been trying to fill it.
• 29:34
  Scott Pratt: And that's where the discouragement comes in, like where when I bring up any pride and I tell the story, the confusion, you know, of like how I present, but who, but where my but where the tapestry of my life really originates from.
• 29:49
  Scott Pratt: They're two different things.
• 29:54
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, they are.
• 29:55
  Crista Cowan: And it's so interesting as I listen to you talk, I can almost see you holding this in your hand, right?
• 30:01
  Crista Cowan: Like this Japanese grandfather on one side and this African-American great-grandmother on another side that was passing as white, and her father passed as white, and right, like the like, and then how you incorporate that into your own identity and try to figure out what that means for how you embrace those stories, how you learn more about them, where you can even go to do that, and what that means going forward, right?
• 30:28
  Scott Pratt: This is a this is a this is a story that's still unfolding, you know, and where where I fit in in this story, but where I definitely fit in is I have some very strong family members who were the most resilient women on the planet, and we're able to uh navigate a situation where I benefited, I got to go to what, you know, and and all I want to do is pass on the legacy if I can.
• 30:55
  Scott Pratt: And that was the whole point of me embracing this.
• 30:59
  Scott Pratt: And it's sad that sometimes I feel like I'm not accepted for like wanting to make a difference, and that's sad.
• 31:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, it is sad, but it also feels like you have the resilience necessary to figure out what it means for you.
• 31:16
  Crista Cowan: And as you think about New York, Brooklyn in particular, but just New York in general, right?
• 31:21
  Crista Cowan: Like your Japanese grandfather really like like he found a way to reinvent himself.
• 31:28
  Crista Cowan: He integrated himself into this Italian family of strong women and and made that place his home.
• 31:36
  Crista Cowan: And then you got And they were some strong women, and then you've got this great-grandfather on the other side, Frank, going to Manhattan, making it in you know, the film industry, making an entertainer out of himself, passing to do it.
• 31:52
  Crista Cowan: He found a way to integrate, to reinvent himself and to tell his own story in the way he wanted to tell that.
• 31:59
  Crista Cowan: And now it seems like here you are doing the same thing.
• 32:02
  Crista Cowan: Maybe you need to go to New York.
• 32:04
  Scott Pratt: You know, that's funny.
• 32:06
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, I think I'm a Brooklyn may be calling me because it's sure.
• 32:09
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:10
  Scott Pratt: Um, so I just got accepted uh for a um I passed all the prerequisites, or they they allowed me to waive my prerequisites to be part of a program at Harvard, a master's extension program.
• 32:25
  Scott Pratt: I was just accepted to that.
• 32:26
  Scott Pratt: Congratulations.
• 32:27
  Scott Pratt: That's amazing.
• 32:28
  Scott Pratt: Thank you.
• 32:29
  Scott Pratt: In uh biomedical technology management.
• 32:32
  Scott Pratt: And my focus is going to be um, I'm actually gonna be working on my project, but my focus is going to be on on bringing you know skin of color into focus in dermatology and plastic surgery and and medicine in general.
• 32:47
  Scott Pratt: So um my roots are bringing me back for sure.
• 32:52
  Scott Pratt: The drawback to New York and Brooklyn and and Boston is you know, is definitely there.
• 32:57
  Scott Pratt: I don't think it'll ever leave.
• 32:59
  Scott Pratt: You know, it's always gonna be a part of me, no matter how.
• 33:03
  Scott Pratt: I I I've been here out in Seattle 20 years, and and as you can hear, the accent comes out of me every five seconds, even though I try not to.
• 33:10
  Scott Pratt: So, but thank you, Krista.
• 33:13
  Scott Pratt: This was you've you've navigated this really well and kind of uncovered some stuff, and it's been an emotional journey.
• 33:20
  Scott Pratt: And I I'm grateful to you for handling it in a respectful way.
• 33:24
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:26
  Crista Cowan: Well, thank you for sharing it.
• 33:27
  Crista Cowan: I think it's an important story that people need to hear.
• 33:30
  Crista Cowan: That, you know, family history, a lot of who we are and how we identify in the world, how we move forward in the world and the stories that we tell.
• 33:38
  Crista Cowan: It it's wrapped up a lot in the stories of the people that came before us.
• 33:41
  Crista Cowan: And so when we come to know who they were, it it can be a journey to figure it out, but I think it gives us the tools that we need to figure it out.
• 33:50
  Scott Pratt: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:51
  Scott Pratt: And I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of these people, you know, that have gone through similar experiences that I have.
• 33:56
  Scott Pratt: The one thing I can I can say is that um when you have the full story, it's way better than when you're trying to fill in the holes.
• 34:11
  Crista Cowan: So well said.
• 34:14
  Scott Pratt: You just feel like a part of you is missing, like there's a secret passenger.
• 34:17
  Scott Pratt: And I and and I think one of the the narrators for the theancestry.com had spoken about how our history makes up who we are.
• 34:29
  Scott Pratt: And um I think this conversation has really sealed the deal that I am uh I am a product of Marietta and Sophia and Frank and John Sassa and you know Marie Teferro and Marie LaRose and you know um Asa Pratt, who came here out of Brattleboro, New York, and he was like, you know, like you said, when it was still the French colony, so like you don't get any more American than that.
• 35:01
  Scott Pratt: Um I'm a product of all those things, and I'm I want to be able to be proud of it.
• 35:07
  Scott Pratt: And so thank you for giving me a forum to be to to express my pride in all of those people and who they are and what they represent to me, and how they all came together to make you.
• 35:18
  Crista Cowan: Scott, thank you so much for being here with us.
• 35:22
  Scott Pratt: Thank you.
• 35:24
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.