Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2012
Although mulattos were living symbols of the violation of the castesystem, unions between blacks and whites in Natchez [Mississippi] stillexisted. [Some talk] about the commonality of common law marriages, or“permanent alliances,” in 1930s Natchez. Charlotte MackelHarrison’s husband, Robert, grew up knowing a white Jewishgrandfather, Charles Moritz. Harrison’s grandmother Dorcas Walkerhad two daughters[,Julie and Lucille,] with Moritz, who took an activerole in raising the girls. … Under Mississippi state law[,]Moritz could not marry Harrison’s grandmother. If the two hadchosen to cohabit, which they did not, the social mores of Natchezsociety would have tolerated such an arrangement, even though manyresidents – black and white – would have objected.… Walker and Moritz never married anyone else, and fittingly[,]they died in the same year.
I wonder if Dorcas Walker and Charles Moritz ever contemplated, or dreamed,of the world that now exists in the aftermath of Loving.This is a world where their grandson, who was considered black, would beallowed to marry, and would marry, not one, but two white women prior to hisdeath; where three of their six great-grandchildren are currently ininterracial marriages, as is one of their four great-great-grandchildren.Would they approve and cheer, be happy that their descendents are now ableto marry people of any race? Or would they, despite their own actions,deride and decry the miscegenation that runs rampant in their family? Didthey have conversations about how to raise their mixed-race children in theincreasingly segregated South? Or was that a non-issue because theirchildren resided with their mother and were considered culturally, socially,and legally to be black and identified as such? As theirgreat-great-granddaughter, who self-identifies – and isphenotypically, culturally, and socially identified – as black, butis in an interracial relationship, raising a multiracial daughter, I wish Icould ask them these questions.
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