Verda Byrd spent the past seven decades of her life as a black woman, but at age 70, she discovered a shocking family secret her parents took to their grave that she's recently made peace with -- she was born white. 
 
 Byrd, now 72, was adopted as a baby in 1943 by her black parents, who never told her that her biological parents were actually white, she said, explaining that she only uncovered the truth in 2013 about her birth after she went on a search for her biological parents' history. 
 
 "It was overwhelming," she told ABC News today. "You cannot erase 70 years of your life and just accept what the papers say instantly. It's like 70 years pass by, and in a blink of an eye, you’re a different race." 
 
 And though her story may sound similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP leader whose parents accused her of pretending to be black, Byrd said she wants to make it clear she and Dolezal actually very different. 
 
 "She upsets me so much because I don’t understand why she or anyone needs to lie about their race or their ethnic group," said Byrd, of Converse, Texas. "I did not know I was born white. She knew it." 
 
 Byrd's story is a complicated one, and it starts in Kansas City, Missouri, on Sept. 27, 1942, when she was born Jeanette Beagle to her white parents, Daisy Beagle and Earl Beagle, she learned from her adoption documents. 
 
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 "Daisy and Earl were legally married, but Earl would go away and come back and go away in come back," she said. "In 1943, during a time he left Daisy, she had an accident. She fell 30 feet from a Kansas City trolley and wasn't able to care for her then five children. She was in the hospital for a year, and all of her children were placed in a children's home." 
 
 Though Daisy Beagle eventually took four of her children back, she left behind Byrd, who was the youngest and still a baby, and Byrd said she suspects it was because her birth mother realized she wouldn't be able to take care of her. 
 
 Byrd was legally adopted by a black couple, Ray Wagner and Edwinna Wagner, who couldn't have children of their own, Byrd said, adding that her name was changed to "Verda Ann Wagner." She later married and changed her last name to Byrd. 
 
 Strangers would assume Byrd took after her light-skinned mother, Byrd said, and because she had curly hair that could be styled similarly to black women's hair, no one in Newton, Kansas, where she grew up, questioned her about her race, she said. 
 
 "I went to a white school because our town was small and our schools weren't segregated," she said. "And other than my dad getting paid less than his white counterparts, my family didn't experience much discrimination because my mom and I were lighter-skinned and there weren't a lot of African Americans in Newton." 
 
 The dynamics in Newton however, were much different than that of nearby segregated metropolis Topeka, where Byrd and her family sometimes attended church, she said. 
 
 "I was friends with Linda Brown, who was the daughter of the pastor of the AME church I went to youth group conferences with," Byrd said. Brown was involved in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, which ruled school segregation unconstitutional. 
 
 Byrd said she "lived the black experience" even more so at 21 when she moved to a black community where her aunt and uncle lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, to start work. 
 
 "I then began to have black boyfriends, go to black churches and go to black social clubs," she said. "In church classes, I studied the [civil rights] marches and studied our black history, that kind of stuff. I knew who Martin Luther King was and what he stood for. I knew about Emmett Till, Malcolm X, the KKK, that kind of stuff. This was the era I lived and grew up in." 
 
 Byrd eventually married a black man, who served in the Air Force, and she traveled often with him depending on where he was deployed, she said, adding that they've now been married for over 36 years and have one daughter together. 
 
 "Even when my mom died 30 years ago and I first discovered the adoption document with my birth name, we were traveling to Paris, Tokyo, Germany, all these places, so I didn't really think about my birth or adoption or race," she said. 
 
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 Byrd came across the documents again in 2013, after the couple retired in Converse, Texas, a suburb outside of San Antonio. 
 
 "At that time, I thought, now I have the peace of mind to find out who this Jeanette Beagle really is," Byrd said, explaining that she hired a researcher to help her trace her biological history and adoption records. 
 
 "I had to read them over and over and over again for two to three days," she said, explaining that the experience was overwhelming and that she found out she actually had 10 biological siblings, only four of whom are still alive. 
 
 But today, two years after the revelation, she's come to terms with her experience and identity, Byrd said, adding she recently reunited with some of her biological siblings. 
 
 "I've accepted my life, because as a trans-racial adoptee, it is what it is," she said. "I am still comfortable as Verda Ann Wagner Byrd. When I die, and when I'm six feet under, my tombstone is not going to have the word 'race' on it. I'm lucky to have two moms and dads." 
 
 As for what race she currently identifies as, Byrd said she believes she is "a beautiful black woman" and that she recently checked white, black and other on paperwork at a military hospital facility in San Antonio. 
 
 "If they need clarification, I can give it to them," she said. "I was born white, but my whole life, I've lived the black experience." ||||| 72-Year-Old 'Black' Woman Who Discovered She's White Tells PEOPLE: 'I Still Feel Black and That's Not Going to Change' 
 
 Courtesy Verda Byrd 
 
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 For more than 70 years, Verda Byrd of Converse, Texas, thought she was black. Her adoptive parents were black and took her to worship at an all-black congregation. Her best friends were black, her boyfriends were black and she has been married twice – both times to black men.Now Byrd, 72, has recently discovered that she is actually white. And she has a message for Rachel Dolezal , the former NAACP president in Spokane, Washington, who lied about her race."I respect her for wanting equal treatment, but the fact is, she outright lied," she tells PEOPLE. "That's what is so upsetting to me. She knew she was white and tried to be something she wasn't. Whereas in my case, the fact is, I simply did not know. And really, now that I know the truth, does it really matter?"Byrd's remarkable story begins in 1942, when her biological parents, Earl and Daisy Beagle of Kansas City, Missouri, took her home from the hospital and named her Jeanette.The youngest of 10 children, Byrd was given up to foster care at age 2, when her father abandoned the family and her mother was severely injured after falling 30 feet in a trolley accident and could no longer care for her.Her African-American foster parents, Ray and Edwina Wagoner from Newton, Kansas, legally adopted her in Kansas City and named her Verda, circumventing racist adoption laws of the 1940s, she says, because "my mother was light-complected and they assumed she was white."An only child, Byrd grew up during a time of segregation in nearby Missouri, but didn't experience discrimination personally."In our little town of Newton, we didn't have segregation," she says. "And nobody really bothered me, because my complexion was light."Her adopted father, a porter for the Santa Fe Railroad, made $250 a month – more than enough, says Byrd, to provide a comfortable life for her and her mother, a homemaker."My mother took me to a black hairdresser, and I grew up participating in Martin Luther King marches and eating soul food," she says. "My life was completely immersed in black culture, and why wouldn't it be? For all intents and purposes, I was black."It wasn't until October 2013, long after her adopted parents had died, that Byrd came across an adoption document with her birth name on it. Official queries with Kansas City adoption court officials led her to her adoption records, which had been unsealed after her parents' deaths."On every single paper," she says, "it said that I was white.""It was overwhelming – unbelievable," says Byrd, a retired substitute teacher for the Army who has one daughter. "I had never questioned it growing up and my parents had never told me. They took that I was white to the grave, and I simply had no clue. I thought I was black."Her adoption records led her last year to three surviving biological siblings – all sisters."Not only do we learn we have a sister, we learn that she has grown up black," says Debbie Romero, 58, a Dallas florist. "But it certainly didn't bother us. It's not the color of Verda that shocked us, but the fact that we have found a lost sister.""She could have been purple as far as I care," Romero tells PEOPLE. "It's just so fun to have her now in my life."Verda has been married for 36 years to Trancle Byrd, 68, a retired Air Force worker who "went to bed one night with a black woman and woke up the next morning with a white one," says Verda. "I still feel black and that's not going to change.""When you're dead and gone in the cemetery, the tombstone doesn't say what race you were," she says. "It doesn't matter. In the end, you have to take the bitter with the sweet and be comfortable with who you are."
– Verda Byrd is, by her own description, a "beautiful black woman" who lived the full "black experience" while growing up in Kansas, per ABC News: She was raised by adoptive black parents, dated black men, and went to black churches and clubs. But in 2013, long after her parents' deaths, Byrd came across her unsealed adoption documents and made a life-altering find at the age of 70. "On every single paper it said that I was white," she tells People—as were her biological parents, Earl and Daisy Beagle, and the other children they had. Byrd went into foster care at age 2 after Earl left the family and Daisy suffered a bad injury, and she was subsequently adopted, per People. Byrd says no one ever batted an eye at her skin color because her adoptive mom was a light-skinned black woman. Naturally, the realization she's not black was a shocker for Byrd, now 72—and for her husband of 36 years, Trancle, she tells People. "[He] went to bed one night with a black woman and woke up the next morning with a white one," she says, but "I still feel black and that's not going to change. … When you're dead and gone in the cemetery, the tombstone doesn't say what race you were." Three surviving white biological sisters with whom she's since reunited also don't care about her skin color, with one telling the magazine, "She could have been purple as far as I care. It's just so fun to have her now in my life." And for those who may be tempted to draw comparisons between herself and Rachel Dolezal, Byrd has one thing to say. "She upsets me so much because I don't understand why she or anyone needs to lie about their race or their ethnic group," she notes. "I did not know I was born white. She knew it." (A New York Times columnist backs up Byrd's criticism about Dolezal.)