Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born man who became Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, has Black family roots in New Orleans, Louisiana, records show.

ABC News has obtained several records, including U.S. Census records from the early 1900s, demonstrating that the first American pope’s family tree reflects the complex racial history of this country.

Both of Leo XIV’s maternal grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, are described as Black or mulatto in several census documents.

Tune into “The American Pope: Leo XIV,” a special edition of “20/20,” on Friday night at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on ABC, and streaming later on Hulu and Disney+

On their 1887 marriage license, Martinez listed his birthplace as Haiti, and birth records show that he was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Chris Smothers, professional genealogist for 15 years and historian studying at Simmons University, told ABC News that these were the same territories at the time. Baquié’s birth records show she was born in New Orleans.

Despite Martinez being born abroad, his father — the pope’s great-grandfather — was found to be from Louisiana, Smothers said, emphasizing the pope’s ancestry in the American South.

“It’s clear that the Pope has centuries-long ties to free people of color in Louisiana,” Smothers told ABC News.

On the 1900 census, while his family lived in New Orleans, both Leo XIV’s maternal grandparents and his aunts — Irma and Margaret — were identified as Black. However, in 1920, after the family migrated to Chicago and had the pope’s mother Mildred, that decade’s census reflected their race as white.

Like so many families fleeing the South at that time, they could have shifted their racial identity. Smothers called this a common “survival strategy” at the time.

“In that intervening period, they not only migrated from New Orleans to Chicago in the period between 1910 and 1912 but they also changed their racial identifiers, which is very common,” Jari Honora, a genealogist and family historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, told ABC News. “Many families did this as a question of their livelihoods as an economic decision, they passed for white.”

ABC News also obtained photos of those grandparents from the local genealogists working on uncovering this lineage. The pope’s brother, John Prevost, recognized the photos and confirmed to ABC News that they depict their grandparents.