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Chapter Six

MIXED MARRIAGES AS SEEN BY NEGROES

“Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home, and lives where there seems nothing to live on.” Thomas Paine.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, founder of Tuskegee Institute: “I have never looked upon amalgamation as offering a solution to the so-called race problem and I know very few Negroes who favor it or even think of it for that matter.

“What those whom I have heard discuss the matter do object to are laws which enable the father to escape his responsibility or prevent him from accepting, or exercising it when he had children by colored women …

“Those who are fighting race distinction are doing so not because they want to intermingle socially with white people but because they have been led to believe that where race discrimination exist they pave the way for discriminations which are needlessly humiliating and injurious to the weaker race.

“Let me add that I do not wholly share this view myself. While there may be some serious disadvantage in racial distinctions, there are certainly real advantages to my race at least.”¹

Bishop A. Walters: “These laws forbidding intermarriage of the races and the injustices resulting therefrom are crimes which are calling aloud to Almighty God for vengeance and we are compelled to suffer as a nation until such ways are righted.

“None but Almighty God and the women of the Negro race know the baneful effects which colored women have to suffer by such prohibitory laws. Speaking with a colored woman not long ago, she said there is nothing so grinding, so crushing as to look in the face of a white woman and have her say by a sarcastic and withering look, ‘You’re nothing but a thing to be used by our men.’ I say again that prohibitory marriage laws such as I have mentioned above are a sad blot on the escutcheon of our land.”²

About 1928, the Baltimore Afro-American carried a serial “Brown Love,” in which mixed marriages were approved, and asked its readers to express their opinion. The following are excerpts from some of the letters it received:

“I can stand all the interracial love stories you are able to publish.

“I live down South where I haven’t a chance to learn what is going on.”

“There is no disgrace about a colored man marrying a white woman and vice-versa. We need to bury the hatchet and shake hands.”

“I really enjoyed reading the story. I don’t see any harm in printing those stories. I am engaged to a very refined, cultured, white girl, who is a college graduate and also a graduate nurse of a refined family, and I am made welcome in her family. I do not have to sneak or hide to see her. We love each other and will be married in December.

“I think Mr. and Mrs. Saunders of Columbus, Ohio, are wrong in their statement when they say that this is contrary to the holy command of God that races should ever be together, when God made of one blood all mankind.

“No race can consider itself above another. May you continue to print such stories, regardless of the narrow-minded ones.”

“There are interracial loves, interracial marriages, interracial dances, interracial penthouses, half-white and half-colored children, men and women, so why can’t we have interracial love stories?

“Here in the city of Camden, the above is quite true. Since it is, there must be interracial love stories, so please let us have them.”

“I love to read interracial love stories, but down here where I live, no colored man makes love to a white woman; and probably won’t for a long time.”

“If we discuss interracial love affairs from now until a hen learns to chant the Greek alphabet backward, will someone please tell me in what way it is going to help get jobs for our scores of boys and girls graduating in a few weeks?”

“Interracial love, romance and marriage. The most thrilling type of romance and love obtainable. The delicious blending of the attractions that opposites in sex and color have for each other.

“My husband is sealskin brown and I am an ash blond of English extraction. We have an adorable daughter, a picture in pale bronze which only emphasizes our contention that black-white marriages produce the best children possible of any union.

“I adore my husband and child and pity the ignorant and prejudiced members of both races—who do anything to hinder the sweet mating of black and white.”

“This note represents an even dozen white girl members of the Vanilla-Chocolate Social Club of lower Harlem—who are all constant readers of the AFRO, and who needless to say are enthusiastic advocates of interracial romance and marriage. This club has three blonde southern girls among its members, who admit the ridiculous and malicious prejudice of certain sections of the South and make every effort in their power to atone for the blindness of some members of their race.

“Our little club we feel is a practical demonstration of the fun and thrill and genuine good of interracial social association and for not a few of our members wedding bells are ahead.

“Interracial love and marriage should be subtly advertised for eventual national harmony—and among young couples at least is noticeably on the up-swing. Any social gathering in or near Harlem will show that.”

“My wife, who is colored, has just showed me the last two copies of the AFRO containing mixed love fiction, and I intend to buy the AFRO as long as you use that type of story.

“The country needs more interracial love and marriage for the best interests of all concerned. The happiness of the couples involved and the true brotherhood of man in general.”

“I am very anxious to get my vote in and counted on the ‘yes’ side of the editorial policy dealing with black-and-white love and sex stories.

“The extent of such affairs in real life is much greater than the average man or woman realizes—and I cannot for one instant think why stories and articles dealing with this situation should not be published. While these mixed matches often result in marriage, many thousands of mutually agreeable love episodes are carried on “behind the scenes,” and deserve to be brought to the attention of any modern and up-to-date section of your reading public. Perhaps a few ‘bandanna’ sundowners may object, but I am sure a large portion of your younger and more modern subscribers will enjoy at least one such story or article each week.

“Personally, I have enjoyed being the principal and confidant, on many more than one occasion, in such matters and have enjoyed the society of some very lovely and gracious ladies.”

“I have been married for five years to one of the finest gentlemen that ever lived, even though you would classify him as colored. We live in a very fine neighborhood. I think it is real nonsense to think one race is better than another. God made all of one blood.”

The Afro-American said as regards the letters it had received, “Readers who have written in overwhelmingly requesting interracial as well as intraracial love stories, based their opinion on what is going on around them.

“Last week in Philadelphia, a white U. S. marine officer chose a brown mate. This week two white women in Washington tell how they happened to choose colored husbands.

“If we could put all the bigots, ignoramuses and damphools on the race question in a garbage can with a tight cover for a few years, intermarriage of races would be about as uneventful as mating between a white hen and a black rooster, a white bull and a black cow.

“After all there are only two parties to a marriage and when it’s unanimous, with them, who else has anything to do with it?”

The Amsterdam News of New York, a Negro weekly, once told of the Penguin Club, an organization formed by mixed couples in New York, to combat ostracism by both whites and Negroes. As a result of this news article, it reported: “Following the publication of a recent story in The Amsterdam News, telling of the announced purpose of the organization of intermarried couples, the club has been swamped with applications for membership, officials revealed yesterday. So great was the press of applications, that the officers were unable to decide the question at the last business meeting.

“As a result, the Penguin Club has called a special meeting for next month. All persons who sent applications to the club at 56 East 112th Street will be invited to the April meeting where their request for membership will be acted upon. New applications are being received there.

“In forming the club, members pointed out that they were going to make an attempt to provide the social life for themselves and their children with both races. Negro and white, usually deny persons who cross racial lines to seek their life mates.”

The Afro-American which also reported the story about the Penguin Club carried a letter about it from two white girls of which the following are excerpts: “We are two real ‘cornsilk’—and, to be frank, ‘cornfed’—blondes, recently arrived in New York City, both single and both very much in favor of the principles and aims of the club.

“However, we find that, because since, we are not eligible to become affiliated, and hence would like to suggest that the club organize an auxiliary for single persons of both races who desire to associate. This will, we are sure, augment the club greatly in the future by marrying.

“As Mr. Cabot of the club is quoted as saying, regarding the thousands of men and women of both races who, if given their choice would marry their opposite in color, we are two of the latter and hope our suggestion may find favor with the club officials.

WHO IS A NEGRO? EUROPEAN AND ISLAMIC TYPES

X. Upper row: Two Negroid Jews of Berlin (Guenther). Negroid Bedouin (Guenther). Centre: Turkish mulatto (Guenther). George A. P. Bridgetower, celebrated pianist, and accompanist of Beethoven, who was born in Poland. Polish mulatto Jew (Fishberg). Lower row: Egyptian mulatto (Guenther). The Emir Saud of Arabia. John IV, King of Portugal (Bibliotheque Nationale).

“Please keep up this good work, which will eventually ameliorate the sad and unnecessary barriers which now exist between colored and white girls and boys who otherwise would freely carry out Nature’s true law—‘opposites attract’ by meeting and marrying.”

The Chicago Defender, Negro weekly, attacking a Superior Court judge for his stand on intermarriage: “We do not oppose intermarriage; we believe intermarriage is far preferable to the sort of intermixing as is done in the South. We believe, also, that the blood which white people have poured into our veins for 300 years has a definite right to go back into the veins of those who started it, if it’ chooses that direction.

“We have no patience with white men, North or South, who go about preaching their views under the cloak of what ‘better class of Negroes think.’ We are articulate, and quite capable of speaking for ourselves about what we think. Judge Carpenter would be a better judge if he confined his efforts to learning the laws and discussing them as they pertain to his duties. Had he been wanted as a law-maker he would have been sent to that position instead of the one he holds. But finally whether we do or do not want intermarriage is beside the question. We want exactly what is every man’s and every woman’s right—the right to select who we shall marry, and love knows no color, creed, or religion.”³

A Defender correspondent taking issue with the above said: “A white woman never has, nor ever will marry a poor Negro. If you must write of it, give it what it deserves by saying: ‘Two fools met. One white and one black.’

“Judge Carpenter was right. The best Negroes are against intermarriage and any one who says they are not tells a falsehood. It is unfair and misleading and gives the world the wrong opinion of the Negro. Only two classes of people believe in intermarriage, namely, people possessing less than one per cent of race pride, and people possessing less than one per cent of intelligence. Why can not we be as proud of what we are as the other group? It is a coward who would like to don the uniform of the enemy and cross to the winning side. If your race is not what you want it, stay and help make it.”⁴

Another Defender correspondent wrote on miscegenation. “I am for it. I think it is unavoidable and will redound to the benefit of the country and of the world at large. Yet, what chance has a sincere white person to meet a decent colored person? Where are there places, if there are any, where white and colored can meet on purely social basis without getting drunk or indulging in other dissipations? Why don’t you publish the locations of these places where, for instance, the races meet for discussions of a political, artistic and other subjects of universal interest? Keep on publishing those places. See to it that really representative members of your race frequent those places and that the rowdies are kept away from them, and you will see after a while you will get results. Nobody in France draws the color line. Why should they here? It is true we have in this country a vast number of the brutal, stuck-up and conceited Nordics—Dutchmen, Scandinavians, etc. Don’t mind them, their influence on this country’s psychic is not as large as the one your colored race is going to exert.”⁵

In January 1939 a young white man “madly in love” with a colored girl wrote Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, sociologist, then editor of the Crisis, asking him whether he thought it advisable to marry her. DuBois, in turn, asked his readers what they thought of it and received many replies, among which was the following (from a Negro married to a white woman) : “Although during a lifetime I have favored interracial marriages I feel very kindly disposed toward those who disapprove. Years ago I once wrote a strong letter of protest to a friend who had it in view because he was a man of parts and so near the boundary between the so-called races that my fear was that his genius would be lost to the colored race if he took this step. Whether influenced by my letter I know not, but he did not, and now has three children identified with the colored race through an intraracial match.

“The value of intermarriage is that it tends to increase the bond of fellowship between races, destroys prejudices and often produces clever and beautiful offspring. Consider the Eurasians and other vital stocks produced by the racial mixing. Of the last there are countless illustrations. There comes to mind a family of Greater New York in which the husband and wife, white and black, are very ordinary people by human standards. But their three children are clever and beautiful beyond description. My own marriage, though childless, is happy. My wife is of solid English stock, with a long range of accomplishments and a granite character.”

Another letter read: “Such a marriage union would set an example for the 100 per cent white gentlemen in the Southland who are ever ready to disgrace young colored girls and who by such illicit unions are filling the country over with mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons. These unions as the world knows, take place in sections below the Potomac without the sanction of the church or of the state, in face of the fact that in these sections laws are made to prevent colored and white persons marrying into each others’ families. The white man is instrumental in defeating his own laws; he is opposed to the black man marrying his daughter and yet, he makes possible these illicit unions. A young brown-skin man was walking on the street with his wife, a woman of fair hair and complexion and a decided Anglo-Saxon appearance. He was asked by his employer the next morning on going to work: “Did you marry a white woman?’ ‘No, I married a white man’s daughter,” he answered.”⁶

Dr. W. E. B. DuBois himself said: “A man named Lawton writing to the Independent says that the N.A.A.C.P. ‘expressly advocates intermarriage’ of whites and blacks. It does nothing of the sort. It simply declares that if white folk will have sexual commerce with blacks, this must take place under the legal restrictions; that prohibition of such legal marriage is a direct bid for bastards and prostitutes and removes all civilized protection from colored girls and women, and finally that if healthy persons wish to marry that that is their business and neither Mr. Lawton’s nor ours. This is a long way from advocating such marriages. In spite of everything we still maintain that English dukes should have the right to marry Americans. But we do not ‘advocate’ it. We have too much respect for Americans.

“If any white person does not want to marry a colored person no one is going to compel him. If he is asked he has simply to say no.”⁷

Earl Finch, late professor anthropology, Wilberforce University: “Race blending, especially in the rare instances where it occurs under favorable circumstances, produces a type superior in fertility, vitality, and cultural worth to one or both of the parent stocks.”⁸

Gilbert H. Jones, former president of Wilberforce University: “Race admixture is as undesirable on the part of the best colored people as it is on the part of the best whites …

“… Legislation (on race-mixing) is one-sided and is based on the presumption that Negroes want to mix with whites while whites do not want to mix with Negroes; a thing which is absolutely untrue.

“Futhermore, it gives the Negro woman no method of defense in her fight for right living and the protecting of her womanhood, such as every woman ought to have. It breaks down all the restraint of white men and outrages Negro women, and their offspring born under such conditions have no opportunity in law to take on the name of those responsible for their living. If the white men would leave the Negro women alone there would be no such problem from their angle.

“Human sentiment and artificial barriers may delay the intermarriage and amalgamation of the races, but if the laws of biology, holding sway in the whole gamut of living things, tell man anything, it preaches profoundly the fact that racial amalgamation through intermarriage is the ultimate end the whole gamut of living things, tell man anything, it preaches profoundly of racial contact in the United States.

WHO IS A NEGRO? TURKISH TYPE

XI. His Highness, the Kizlar-Aghassi. (See “The Negro in Turkey,” Sex and Race, Vol. I, Appendix).

“As a biological principle, I am not opposed to race amalgamation for nowhere is there evidence that nature took any precautions to prevent it or prohibit it. Personally I am opposed to it as a matter of race pride.”⁹

A black Garveyite, in all probability, a West Indian, on the topics: “As to Mulatto Leaders.”

“It blunts the finer sensibilities to think that conspicuous among the so-called leaders are the mulatto element. Think of having these bastards, offspring of commercialized Negro women, to be assuming to represent the race. Men who knew no father and therefore have no name. Dogs because their mothers were, and they have developed all the instincts of the lower animals. Coming into the world without pre-natal affection and dying without knowing whence they came.”¹⁰

Kelly Miller, late Dean of Howard University: “The Negro resents the reputation that he is over-eager to marry into the white race. Every time a Negro marries a white person, a white person marries a Negro.”¹¹

Alain Locke, professor of philosophy, Howard University: “It is my opinion that race amalgamation proceeds much more rapidly where races are socially and economically unequal, and that it is this kind of miscegenation that is from both Negro and Caucasian points of view undesirable.

“Considering that the considerable amount of race intermixture has up until recently been the outcome of such exploitation of the economically and socially weaker group, we must, I think, conclude that any degree of amalgamation in the future could not produce deterioration of physical stock or of the standard of living in this country, since it has not done so thus far.

“Theoretically, then no unbiased mind can be opposed to the principle of race amalgamation. On the whole, nature has answered that question affirmatively.”¹²

Arthur Hale, in letter to Baltimore Afro-American August 9, 1941): “As you know, my wife is white. We never lose an opportunity to let the world know that I am colored and that what we have accomplished represents colored.

“Better still, we thus drive home to the whites the fact that a colored and white couple can love, marry and live in a normal, successful, happy life together. Thus we destroy, in a small way, another of their pet theories.

“We often go about with white couples. I always find some way to let others know what I am. I feel proud to do so. When traveling abroad foreigners never think for a moment that we are what are called American colored people.

“It is always our delight to let the world know what we represent. You would be amazed at the worlds of thought that this opens up for the foreigners. And they are glad to learn of us.”

Negro Youth, a magazine in the interests of the unmixed Negroes as against the mulattoes: “Where a black man marries a mulatto or half breed he strikes a greater blow than white people could ever strike for the degradation, dishonor, and enslavement of the black race …

“Mulatto women are the greatest saboteurs and fifth-columnists among our race. They corrupt and debauch the moral character of black men … White men use mulatto women as concubines and for the worst forms of sex perversion …” (April 1941).

One article in the same issue is entitled, “Mulattoes—An Insult to Black People,” and denounces the mulatto as a “damnable” mixture.¹³

In its issue of November 20, 1943, the Baltimore Afro-American asked the question, “When a white man marries a colored woman or vice versa, do you think they love each other, or is it merely a sexual attraction.?” Among the answers received were:

“When two people marry they marry for love in most cases. I think that mixed couples marry for love and it doesn’t matter what color the parties are.”

“They marry for sexual reasons. If there is any love I think that it is on the man’s side. A white woman couldn’t love a colored man and if a colored woman married a white man it would only be for what he could give her materially.”

“Races shouldn’t intermarry. My experience has been that mixed marriages aren’t as happy as others.”

“I don’t think that true love exists there, because love is based upon understanding and there is very little of that between the races.”

1 Amer. Jour. of Social., Vol. 21, p. 672. 1915-16

2 Quoted in Holm, J. J., Race Assimilation, p. 488. 1910.

3 Editorial, March 22, 1930.

4 Editorial page, May 3,. 1930.

5 Editorial page, March 15, 1930.

6 Crisis Maga., March, 1930.

7 Crisis Maga., Jan. 1927, p. 128; Feb. 1928, p. 108.

8 Inter-Racial Papers, G Spiller, p. 108. 1911.

9 See No. 3, chapter 2.

10 Negro World, Dec. 25, 1922.

11 Release to Negro Press, Jan. 1930.

12 See No. 3, Chapter 2.

13 The editor of this magazine is Samuel W. Daniels. For further pronouncements of his see J. R. Carlson‘s Under Cover, p. 157, 1943.