Was the matriarch of a Memphis political dynasty a white woman who married into a black family? Or was she a black woman with a white forefather buried in her lineage, a past shared with millions of black people?And why does it matter?Vera D. Ford The race of Vera Ford, the paternal grandmother of U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., came up when Harold Jr. declared she was white while campaigning for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee. His statement, first reported in December in a USA Today profile of the congressman, surprised many longtime Memphians who knew the Ford family and...