The author of the article won a pulitzer prize for an article he wrote decades ago about how corruption at the Bureau of Indian Affairs was taking money away from native americans, and was also a professor at USC. Ironically he won his pulitzer two years before his mom died, at which point his Lola was "semi freed" from slavery and went to live with him and his family and started getting paid ($200/month I think). Just all around a pretty fucked up thing. Like you know the guy kinda wanted to do good, but that can't erase the fact that for all of his 20s, 30s, and 40s he knew this woman was a slave to his mom and did nothing about it, until his mom died.
Reminds me a lot about the Chappelle cosby bit
The incredibly (more) weird fucking thing about the whole story: The Atlantic decided to run his story, which he had been working on for months, as its cover for the May issue on March 23d. They were set to call him in the afternoon to let him know. He died in his bed that morning of natural causes and never found out.