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

[Silvercosma]

Opponents of interracial relationships claim that people who are involved interracially lose touch with their communities, are too weak or too self centered to stand up for marginalized and disadvantaged people, and can't be role models for the next generation.

Let's make a list of all those people who made a difference eventhough they were/are involved with or married to non-black women or non-white men. Let's show respect where it's due no matter if they are historical persons, celebrities or the man/woman next door. And if you want to brag about your own activities - please don't be shy and use this space to do so!


Frederick Douglass and his wife Helen Pitts

Frederick Douglass was probably the most prominent abolitionist and reformer, his wife Helen Pitts was active in the women's rights movement.


Thurgood Marshall and his Filipina wife Cecile Suyat

Thurgood Marshall was appointed Chief counsel for the NAACP who won 29 out of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, among them Brown v. Board of Education (outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities), Shelley v. Kraemer (granted the right to purchase and own property), Smith v. Allwright (opened primary elections to voters of all races) and Browder v. Gayle, (ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott). Cecile worked as a secretary for the NAACP.


Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren

They established several charitable and youth projects, among them the Tiger Woods Foundation which provides university scholarships for disadvantaged children, and the Tiger Woods Learning Center which offers day and after school programs, summer programs, weekend and community outreach programs and online learning programs to improve skills in reading, math, science and technology.

 

[Ellahara]

Olaudah Equiano and his English wife Susannah Cullen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano

 

[Silvercosma]

Thanks for posting Olaudah Equiano, Ellahara!

Here is one more:

Michael Jackson

with Lisa Marie Presley

and Deborah Rowe

He has done so much, it's simply too much to list in this thread. In the Guinness Book of World Record's he is listed as having the most charities supported by a pop star. He received several awards, among them the Humanitarian Award from AASA for his worldwide humanitarian efforts. See the complete list (several pages lóng) here

 

[Silvercosma]

Harry Belafonte and his wife Julie Robinson-Belafonte

Belafonte was an early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and one of Martin Luther King's confidants. During the McCarthy era he was blacklisted for his Civil Rights work. He bailed Martin Luther King out of the Birmingham City Jail and raised thousands of dollars to release other imprisoned Civil Rights protesters. He financed the Freedom Rides, supported voter-registration drives, and helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963. Africare awarded him the Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award for his efforts to assist Africa.
Read more here

 

[Soulthinker]

Yes,give them their due. Douglass had another relationship with a WW before Helen Pitts

 

[nobledruali]

Yes,give them their due. Douglass had another relationship with a WW before Helen Pitts

Didn't know that SOUL. :shock: Who was she :?:

PS>Great thread by the way Silver :!: :!: :!:

 

[Silvercosma]

Thank you Nobledruali!

Soulthinker, you are right!
I just looked it up and he was indeed with another white woman before Helen Pitts: Ottilie Assing! There is a book about them.

Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass

Editorial Review from Amazon.com:

Mulatto ex-slave Frederick Douglass and half-Jewish, German-bred journalist Ottilie Assing were unlikely candidates for romance when they met in New York in 1856. But what began as an interview for a biography on the famed African American abolitionist turned into a torrid, extramarital love affair that lasted 28 years. In Love Across Color Lines, Maria Diedrich explores the labyrinthine sexual, social, and racial conventions of 19th-century American society with which these two intelligent people had to contend. Through Douglass and Assing's letters, Diedrich reconstructs the triumph and tragedy of their union. "Douglass was enchanted with his German companion, but he never again forgot that any liaison with a white woman could prove fatal to his political mission," she writes. "Assing," meanwhile, "respected the burden he had taken upon himself. She defied conventional notions of morality and became both intellectually and physically intimate with this extraordinary man, certain that he would marry her." When Douglass's wife died, however, he eventually married another (younger, white) woman--and Assing committed suicide. In addition to uncovering a vital aspect of Douglass's personal life largely overlooked by previous biographers, Diedrich's informative work looks at Assing's remarkable sacrifice, powered by a love that propelled her into America's bewildering racial wilderness.

 

[Silvercosma]

Another man who had a weakness for Fräuleins:

W.E.B. Du Bois and Dora Marbach and Amalie Lebenfeldt

I couldn't find pictures of the ladies, and only little information about them:

Dora Marbach

White studying in Germany, he fell in love and considered marrying a Dutch girl named Dora Marbach. Unfortunately, the girl's mother ended the relationship when visiting white Americans exhibited shock at a white girl and black man having a public relationship. (Hugh James Momson, W.E.B. Du Bois's Sociological Research)

Amalie Lebenfeldt

It was in Berlin that Du Bois evidently had his first significant--and tragic--love affair. The details of this are sketchy, but Du Bois lived with a German shopgirl, probably Amalie Lebenfeldt, a name noted at the end of an unpublished list of women's names Du Bois compiled. Since the city address books do not list anyone of that name, she likely lived the kind of transient existence in Berlin that Du Bois did. Or perhaps she lived in one of the suburbs of Berlin not covered in the address books. We simply don't know. All that Du Bois says of her in the Autobiography is that he feels remorse for having caused her "(perhaps) life-ruin". What can this mean? Did she become a social outcast for having a relationship with a man outside of marriage? And a foreigner? And a "Neger," as the Germans of the time would have said? Did she become pregnant? Did she have his child out of wedlock? One can continue to ask such questions,but answers will be difficult to come by. (Hamilton Beck, W. E. B. Du Bois as a Study Abroad Student in Germany, 1892-1894)

 

[nobledruali]

:shock: Okay Silver, you're really SCHOOLING us on the historical IR lo-lo stuff :!: Thanks. :wink:

 

[Soulthinker]

Now I'm learning something. I didn't know DuBois had some relationships with WW. I thought he just went there only to study and didn't associate with the Europeans. I read he was planning to write a novel about a IR in the late 1940s or early 1950s but he did not carried it through.

 

[Soulthinker]

There should be a book on the reason of the German female's insatiable love for chocolate men. No question there is a population of Germans who have some Black blood in them. Desire and love happens in history inspite of laws forbiding it.

 

[LaydeezmanCris]

Okay Silver, you're really SCHOOLING us on the historical IR lo-lo stuff :!:

Actually, all of these things are in history books. If you go to the "History" section of any good library, you'd be able to pick up books about these people. I've certainly read about these things before.

Anyway:

Nat King Cole and Gunilla Hutton.

Nat King Cole was married twice but after the breakup of his second marriage, maintained a relationship with Gunilla Hutton (Nurse Goodbody of 70s sitcom "Hee Haw") until his death. It was rumored that they had affairs during his second marriage to Maria Hawkins Ellington.

 

[fly girl]

New Orleans Roman Catholics who began to integrate after WWII.

 

[nobledruali]

Okay Silver, you're really SCHOOLING us on the historical IR lo-lo stuff :!:

Actually, all of these things are in history books. If you go to the "History" section of any good library, you'd be able to pick up books about these people. I've certainly read about these things before.

Anyway:

Nat King Cole and Gunilla Hutton.

Nat King Cole was married twice but after the breakup of his second marriage, maintained a relationship with Gunilla Hutton (Nurse Goodbody of 70s sitcom "Hee Haw") until his death. It was rumored that they had affairs during his second marriage to Maria Hawkins Ellington.

:? Ah like I said, I appreciate the schooling from all of you...even you too LC. :lol:

 

[nobledruali]

:shock: Didn't know that Nat's white lady-friend was on Petticoat Junction

or on Match Game either

:wink:
:arrow: And here's a glamour shot of her too :!:

 

[Ellahara]

There should be a book on the reason of the German female's insatiable love for chocolate men. No question there is a population of Germans who have some Black blood in them. Desire and love happens in history inspite of laws forbiding it.

Like the mixed race children of the German ladies and the African-French troops in Germany who were sadly subject to Hitler's Nazi regime. I remember my history teacher saying that the children were there simply because "when you put people together they interact and fall in love, and so will have children - its what happens" without mentioning race once. That made me smile so much, not quite sure why, I suppose he just showed how simple it all is - how no matter what is said or done, or what differences there are, people will still fall in love.

 

[nobledruali]

:idea: Also I want to speak on the COURAGE of Sammy Davis Jr & May Britt

to go ahead and love each other despite the fact that when they got married IR unions were outlawed in 31 of the 50 states :!:

Not to even mention the death threats that they received especially Sammy for a long time. :roll: I didn't really appreciate him at first but he was very talented and a trailblazer for many black entertainers that came after him.

:wink: PS> Got to give it up too for Frank Sinatra for standing by and in for his friend Sammy Davis Jr when he & May got married when most of HOLLYWEIRD wouldn't even touch them at their wedding :!:

 

[Silvercosma]

Great additions!!! Keep it coming!!

 

[Silvercosma]

Okay Silver, you're really SCHOOLING us on the historical IR lo-lo stuff :!: Thanks. :wink:

Oh no, I don't have enough knowledge to school somebody. I know a few prominent ones, but most I have to research on the net as well, and there are some I don't know at all and then you school me on them, like the informations about Olaudah Equiano posted by Ellahara, and Ottilie Assing which was brought up by Soulthinker. That's what I like about discussion boards: everybody adds a piece and at the end we all benefit from it.

Let's keep it growing until people think twice before they continue to say things like: people involved in IR relationships are "lost for their communities" or "they aint shit" unless they want to make themselves look really stupid ...

 

[Silvercosma]

James Farmer and his wife Lula Peterson

James Farmer was the pioneer of the civil rights movement's nonviolent direct action against racial discrimination and segregation. Direct action included sit-ins, boycotts, and picketing of places of public accommodation such as restaurants, theaters and bowling alleys which discriminated against people of color. The New York Times upon his death in 1999 described him as "a principal founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the last survivor of the `Big Four."' The four included Roy Wilkins of the N.A.A.C.P., Martin Luther King, and Whitney Young of the Urban League. Lula Peterson was a white member of CORE.
More about him here