Respect where it's due: BM/WW IR in History

Obama's dad got another WW pregnant too.

 

When I see interracial couples that are even 50 years old (let alone 70+ or long since passed), I'm silently grateful to them. The tough times they went through to normalize interracial relationships means that my husband and I can hold hands in public and (for the most part) not have to worry or think about it. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a white woman dating / married to a black man in 1960.

 

It was dangerous in some places in 1960 like the South. Plus,the WW in places where IR is legal had to hide their photos of their husbands in the workplace.

 

It was a death wish for ANY bm male particularly in the south (notice I said male and not man) that dared to even glance at let alone pursue a ww. i.e. Emmett Till, George Stinney Jr, Ed Johnson and the Scottsboro Boys.

 

We know how that worked out

 

the Southern Poverty Law Center is a Socialist money laundering organization.

 

One of the rare IR photos of 100+ years ago.

 

And many more before them.

 

On his mother's side she was decended from a Black African slave and had IR whose family passed as White.

 

More info? I know folks are gonna feel some type of way that Obama is actually a Descendant of AA Slaves.

 

I've been wanting to do a thread on Interracial between black men and white women through out history since seeing the movie A United Kingdom and learning more about them.



There has been so many beautiful interracial couples throughout history and their amazing stories that just defines love. It is obvious that hollywood more than likely would touch these stories like a hand to a hot pan, so I thought I would add some of the couples and their stories that I have read this year.

 

I know I should start off with Ruth and Seretse, but the last story I read is a very good one that shocked me and intrigued me.

Theophilus Wonja Michael & Martha Wegner


From the book entitled Black German by their son Theodor Michael

Theodor Michaels father comes from Cameroon, which since 1884 was so called "German protected area". As a colonial member, Theophilus Wonja Michael Untertan of the German Empire was able to enter Berlin at the end of the 19th century. He married a German and got four children with her. Theodor was the youngest. His mother died shortly after his birth. In order to bring the children through, the father made his way through the country with them, and became part of the then-popular peoples. African-looking people were put into bastards and presented as a culturally unprotected savage to the cultured Europeans. The performances were against Theodor. When he was four, the authorities determined that the father was not able to "secure a decent life for the children." The family was torn apart. The older children appeared with artists in the circus, Theodor and his sister came to a nursing family, who wanted to earn money with the two above all. They took care of the household, went to the circus, and again went to peoples' houses.

More of the story here ( You have to translate the page) http://www.stadtgottes.de/stago/ausgaben/2016/05/themen/Nie-wieder-Bastroeckchen.php


Theodor Michael as a young family father with his then wife Elfriede and son Roy (1948)

 

True indeed. He is no "foreigner" like some racists say.

 

I heard of that book somewhere a year or two back. Pleased it is being sold in the States.

 

There has been two books published of their relationship. It is mentioned in Wikapedia.

 

I could imagine that brother saying "I feel like Jack Johnson now."

 

Here is another wonderful and groundbreaking IR couple and family, that you probably never heard of.

George, Josephine & Philippa Schuyler


(Tough to find a younger picture of couple, probably didn't take too many understandably.)

Born in Texas in 1897 to a wealthy family, Schuyler left for California after the brief marriage she had entered at sixteen ended. There, she spent time as a Max Sennett bathing beauty and a ballet dancer in a San Francisco opera company.

George S. Schuyler (1895-1977) was a conservative black journalist, satirist, author and editor. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 25,1895 to George Francis Schuyler, a chef, and Eliza (Fischer) Schuyler. The Schuyler family was from the Albany-Troy area, a great grandfather having served under General Philip Schuyler, and his racially mixed maternal line was from the New York/New Jersey area. Schuyler grew up in Syracuse, New York and when not traveling for his career, spent most of his adult life in New York City.

George Schuyler, a black journalist, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress, believed that intermarriage would “invigorate” the races. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory. Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 1940s she graced the pages of Time magazine and The New Yorker. Philippa soon became the inspiration for a generation of African-American children.
Shunned by blacks and whites alike, Josephine found herself isolated in the family's Harlem apartment, transformed by her radical interracial marriage into a conventional housewife. She reclaimed some voice for herself by writing an advice column — as a black woman — for The Pittsburgh Courier, the nation's largest black newspaper. She was also a poet and a painter, and served as her pianist daughter's manager.

 

I read about her many years ago and according to one biography of her she tried to pass as White. She died in Nam back in 67.

 

(not sure if mentioned.) Joe Appiah and Peggy Cripps




Joe Appiah was a Ghanaian lawyer, politician and statesman. His father was a schoolmaster, Methodist leader, traditional nobleman and, finally, Chief Secretary of Asanteman, a position his son would also subsequently occupy.

Peggy Cripps was the daughter of a British chancellor of the exchequer defied the conventions of her time by marrying an Ashanti political leader and who went on to become an author and a revered figure in her adopted homeland, Ghana.

When the couple were married at St John's Anglican Church, St John's Wood, several weeks later, the Independent Labour Party sent its best wishes. Such Labour figures as Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell and Michael Foot joined the Indian politician Krishna Menon and colourfully attired African chiefs in the congregation. But less goodwill was detectable in Africa when the wedding pictures were published.


The couple had four Kids.

Side fact: The Appiahs are said to have been the inspiration, along with another African-British couple, Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, for the 1967 film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," which dealt with a California couple's reaction to their daughter's engagement to a black doctor.