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Despite these signs of acceptance, intolerance persists. Some Blacks and Whites report that they have been mysteriously fired after employers discovered their marital status. And an interracial couple, according to the Center for Democratic Renewal, ned only go two miles outside Atlanta to be the victim of attack. Elmo Seay and his White wife, Susan, for example, fled from a suburban Atlanta subdivision after their home was vandalized and firebombed. Another interracial couple, Susan Hill, 29, and her Black husband, John, 36, got so frustrated with the ostracism and rejection by friends, family, landlords and employers that they left Bolivar, Tenn., temporarily and settled in Jackson, Tenn., until the commotion died down. “It was like I had committed a crime,” Susan Hill says. “Being from a small town, it just seems it is born and bred in some people that you don’t like Blacks, no matter what.”

An assemblage

Does Form Matter?

Another Lunch

Another day, another lunch.  I walk through those all-too-familiar steel double doors and take my place in the lunch line. The usual smells of bleach and stale food my nostrils. The large white lunch lady hands me my tray without a saying a word. I take my generic black plastic tray and head toward the back of the cafeteria. As I walk past the rows of laughing and happy children my eyes search for the one person I long to see each day. I spot him out at one of the tables of junior-class boys. I walk up, not quite knowing what to expect. I know we have to keep it quiet, I know we won’t hug or even waive, but perhaps a word, just one word can get through this divide. I walk up to him, smile, and open my mouth to speak. Before a single sound can emerge from the depths of my soul I met with a barrage of comments

“You’re master ain’t here girl.”

“You lost? The fields out back.”

“Hey bitch, go fetch me another tray, I’m awfully hungry.”

Each successive comment is met with audible laughter. Those were only the ones I heard, although I’m sure that there were more. I stood frozen, eyes level with Michaels, not knowing what to do. Should I say something? Go? Cry? Run? How could Michael allow this? why didn’t he stop it? i stood and watched until Michael himself, trying to fit in cracked a smile. It’s at that point that the cold began to envelope me and I became alone. Sure he’d apologize and I would take him back, but things were altered forever. I had strayed from the rules, from the confines of color and tried to find my world of Grey. Now I am left, even with Michael, together, alone.

Lines

“I love you, not only for what you are, But for what I am when I am with you.”
–Roy Croft

Where Worlds Meet

Regina woke from her nap to a tapping sound. Rat-Tat-Tat…. Rat-Tat-Tat. She rubbed the sleep from her bleery eyes and headed toward her window. Outside was the her counterpoint, her relief. Michael was waiting for her with what looked like a backpack.

“What?” she said with what she hoped sounded like contempt.

“Look I’m sorry about today, the guys, the just don’t understand. They think its funny, like its a joke or something.”

“Michael you shrugged me off at lunch and then ditched me after school! Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“Regina I’m sorry, I’m trying to make up for it, I’m trying tomake it work.”

She paused for a moment. He seems sincere, I want to go with him, I miss him. I’ll go “Whats that for?” Regina asked.

“Stop being so nosy and get out here already, we have to hurry.”

“You’re ridiculous!” Regina said laughingly and climbed out the window.

The two of them climbed into the beat up old 1990 Landcruiser that Michael had gotten for his 16th birthday and pulled away from the house. They drove and drove until they reached the end. The place where they always went to get away. To everyone else it was a parking lot next to a small airport perched on a peninsula between two shipping channels. They parked the car where channel met. That one point where two different paths coming from different cities combined.

To them it was a launching point to a place without boundries, rules, guidelines, or pressures. A place where they could just be. There were sailboats and houseboats dotting the water. Across the channel the sulfur mines billowed that familiar odorous smoke into the blue and orange sky. As the sun continued to fall and the world began to gray, they would lay in the bed of the truck wrapped in a blanket and like the smoke, just drift away. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

Prom

I had been dating her six-months and they still didn’t know by the night of prom. They lovingly and happily joked about my “mystery woman”, probably thinking that I was just being secretive. They were happy for once, filled with the anticipation of meeting my date for  my first pro. “You’re all grown up” my mom said with a smile and a hug. All I could do was look at the floor. My father was tying my tie when there was a knock at the door. It was Nardley. I knew it. My father reached the kitchen before I could get there and opened the door. I heard him say: How can we help you……miss?”

She replied “I’m Nardley, I’m Jake’s date to the prom.”

“Wait here” he replied.

My father returned to the room and said “Jake it’s for you” and gave me a look that I knew had changed his view of me forever.

When You Marry

Pages taken out of a 1962 textbook supposedly used for health studies class.

Mclaughlin and Loving

The fight for civil rights and in turn the right to love was fought through the American legal system.  Two cases specifically helped reverse the legal barriers against inter-racial relationships. 

McLaughlin v. Florida was a case where the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a cohabitation law in Florida was unconstitutional. The law had prohibited two people from living in the same home if one of them were black and the other person white. The nullification of this law led to the Pace v. Alabama ruling which had previously said that anti-miscegation laws were constitutional.  These two rulings led up to what is largely considered the landmark case on the legality of race-based marriager: Lovings V. Virgina. The Lovings case would declare the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional and put an end to all anti- miscegenation.

A Mother’s Choice

Regina ran through the front door down the hall and into her room, slamming the door behind her. She threw herself onto the bed and began to cry, just cry. Why did they have to be so mean to her? Why did they care? It isn’t her fault, you can’t pick who your parents are. I just want to fit in… I just want to fit in…

Hearing her daughter’s audible sobs over the sizzle of vegetable oil frying in the oven pan, Mrs. Watson, took the pan off the burner, turned off the oven and walked down the hall. She opened her daughters door, found her crying and said “What’s wrong child?

“Its all worng momma, all wrong!”

“What is ?”

“I am, momma I just don’t fit!”

“What do you mean Regina?”

“The kids…  the kids at school hate me. I’ve got nowhere to sit and no-one to talk to, not even Michael!”

“Why baby? Whatd did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, You did! You did! Its your fault they don’t like me. Its your fault I have a white father! No one will speak to me. Im stuck in the middle momma, I’m stuck in the middle. I’m not black and I’m not White momma. I might as well be gray!”

Precedents

The practice of inter-racial relationships is almost as old as our nation’s founding. “The first recorded interracial marriage in North American history took place between John Rolfe and Pocahontas in 1614.”  This practice would grow to the point that there were once 60,000+ inter-racial relationships within the American Colonies. This trend would soon be curttailed however, when the colonial lawmakers began to adopt the perception that African descendents were inferior to their white counterparts. Fear coupled with this line of thought led to the eventual establishment of Segregation and anti-miscegenation laws.

The first legislation prohibiting inter-racial relationships was passed in Virginia in 1661. Maryland would eventually follow suit in 1715 and 1717 by passing laws that forbade the cohabitation of person’s haveing different racial backgrounds. The development of slavery only fueled the fire and led to even more invasive laws.