Oh man, I forgot I had this post and created another one.
I found the solution. For some reason, I think deleting the blueprint class, and having a cast node in other blueprints messed things up.
I figured out that if I drag the graph tab out into a floating window, the graph would generate, and then if i moved the tab back, it would go back to black.
I had to close all tabs, then double click to open a graph, drag tab away into floating window, and since it is only tab, drag it back to where I wanted it and the graph would stay loaded.
However, I had to always do this no matter what i did.
Many years of using UE (4-6?) and I never realized you could save and load editor layouts…so I loaded the default and it solved the problem for good