Two Tales of Interracial Couples in the 1950s

Loving is a film about the outlawed marriage between a black woman and a white man in 1958 Virginia. It will open on November 4, but that story is one that journalist Soledad O'Brien has known since childhood. She knows the story because her Afro-Cuban mother and Irish-Australian father endured much of the same hostility.

Soledad's parents, both immigrants, met at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1958 and married in 1959. Interracial marriage was illegal in Maryland then, so the couple was married in Washington, D.C. As in the film, it was a time when an interracial couple couldn't get served in restaurants together and people were very intentionally trying to keep interracial couples apart.

In a story from The Hollywood Reporter, Soledad tells about her parents story.

"My older sisters were born in Maryland, which, like Virginia, was under an anti-miscegenation law, and my mom told me people would spit on them as they walked down the street. Even when my family moved to New York, where I was born, it was hard to get housing. But my parents never talked about that while we grew up. They didn't want that to frame how we thought about our community. They were quiet activists but felt they were on the right side of history."

Soledad says that she is hoping to watch Loving with her dad but that her parents (who will celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary in December) live more in today than in the past.

Q&A with Soledad O'Brien About "Black in America"

A sample Q&A from "10 Questions for Soledad O'Brien" on the TheLoop21.com site which offers insight, resources and opinions on African American issues.


Loop 21: As a mom of four young children, do you want your kids to grow up respecting the complexities of race in America? Can you see where they already do?

S.O.: You know, my kids watch every [Black In America] documentary. When we start looking at screeners, they sit down…we all sit down together…. It’s very interesting for me to get their reaction to what they’re seeing. They were really broken up…I mean, it was painful for them to watch Nayo’s struggle. They really had a hard time with it because I think they don’t see me struggle with [being biracial]. We’ve had conversations about race at home… and I’m sure I’ve completely bored them out of their minds talking about race. I think it was very disturbing for them to see a young woman tortured about something so essential to who she is.

More at http://loop21.com/life/10-questions-soledad-obrien-black-in-america

Not Black Enough?

There have been several posts online the past week about an encounter Soledad O’Brien had with Rev. Jesse Jackson.

In an interview she had with Jackson, he challenged her “Blackness.” O'Brien lists in her bios that she identifies herself as a Black woman. She is biracil with her mother being of Afro-Cuban descent and her father being Irish.

Her career and work at CNN, especially in the past five years, has led her to be an advocate for Black and Latino people.

The encounter with Jackson in recounted in her new book The Next Big Story which was published this month.

Even though I am not sure what he [Jesse Jackson] is saying, I can tell he is angry. Today he is angry because CNN doesn’t have enough black anchors.

I interrupt to remind him, “I’m the anchor of American Morning”. He knows that. He looks me in the eye and reaches his fingers over to tap a spot of skin on my right had. He shakes his head. “You don’t count,” he says. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I don’t count — what? I’m not black? I’m not black enough? Or my show doesn’t count?

I was both angry and embarrassed, which rarely happens at the same time for me. Jesse Jackson managed to make me ashamed of my skin color which even white people had never been able to do.

I am immediately upset and annoyed and the even more annoyed that I am upset and pissed off. If Reverend Jesse Jackson didn’t think I was black enough, then what was I? My parents had so banged racial identity into my head that the thoughts of racial doubt never crossed my mind. I’d suffered an Afro through the heat of elementary school. I’d certainly never felt white. I thought my version of black was as valid as anybody else’s. I was a product of my parents (black woman, white man) my town (mostly white), multiracial to be sure, but not black? I felt like the foundation I’d built my life on was being denied, as if someone was telling me my parents aren’t my parents.

Soledad O'Brien - Transcending Race in America

Did you know interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states until 1967?

The life stories in each volume of  "Transcending Race in America: Biographies of Biracial Achievers" ask and answer this question: What is it like to be biracial in America--to have a mother and a father from different races?

The series is for young adult readers.

Soledad O'Brien is the title of the book by David Robson that is part of the "Transcending Race in America" series.

Others in the series include historical and contemporary biographies: Alicia Keys, Beyonce, David Blaine, Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Frederick Douglass, Mariah Carey, Prince, Rosa Parks, Salma Hayey and W.E.B. DuBois.

David Robson's young adult books include The Murder of Emmett Till, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Auschwitz, The Black Arts Movement, The Kennedy Assassination, and The Devil.

SoledadOBrien.info