They were told their babies had died. Now, these black women wonder: Was it a lie?

One woman and her long-lost daughter may have brought a dark chapter from St. Louis history to light.

As a 26-year-old woman in 1965, Zella Jackson Price was told that her daughter had died shortly after birth. Nearly 50 years later, though, Jackson Price learned that her daughter has been alive all along.

Melanie Diane Gilmore, also known as “Baby Diane,” is now 49 and living in Oregon. After mother and daughter reunited last month, thanks to some Facebook sleuthing by Gilmore’s children, dozens of other women have come forward with eerily similar and potentially tragic stories.

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