Barbara Hilyer had never been to Minneapolis before this week. But her journey to the city to speak about her book, “Legacy Lost: Passing Across the Color Line,” is a kind of homecoming.

In 1882, Hilyer’s great-grandfather, Andrew Franklin Hilyer, became the first African American to graduate from the University of Minnesota. He went on to become a prominent civic leader in Washington, D.C. His son, her grandfather Gale Pillsbury Hilyer, Sr., followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating from the U of M and becoming a lawyer in Minneapolis as well as a founding member of the city’s NAACP.

For many years, Barbara Hilyer didn’t know any of this. She grew up in Oregon, believing that she was white. Her father, Gale Pillsbury Hilyer, Jr., left Minnesota after his service in World War II and

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