FROM THE MORGUE
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Copyright 2012 by William A. Mays, Proprietor
April 1964
| HIDDEN PROBLEMS PLAGUE MIXED MARRIAGES |
Passion for Cool Rhythm
Did she really marry the man because he shared her passion for cool rhythm? We put the question to a well-known New York psychologist and he came back with a rather different answer:
"Negro men have a definite sexual attraction for some white women," he explained. "But frequently the women concerned will try and disguise this attraction behind other motives. Music may be one. A crusading spirit may be another.
"And finally there may be a strong revenge motive. The girl may be subconsciously getting even with her family—her teachers—society in general—by committing an act all of them find distasteful. The same may apply to the colored man. By making a white woman his wife he may be getting his revenge on a former slave society that punished such a breach of its rules with death."
These factors are often added to the other hidden pressures that combine to wreck black-white marriages. Under the circumstances it would be almost miraculous if they worked out well—and most of them don't.
Former nightclub singer Kay Eden recently sued for divorce her Canadian husband Marvin Frank, head of three large business corporations. And even the much-publicized marriage of dusky sex bomb Eartha Kitt to white William McDonald seems to have floundered. Latest reports have it that the couple are going to separate.
Defenders of intermarriage may point at the mixed wedlocks that are still staying locked.
Folk singer Harry Belafonte divorced his colored wife in 1957 to marry white Julie Robinson. His was one of the few mixed marriages that were actually welcomed by the girl's family. Said Harry on their wedding day: "We didn't marry to prove any social point. We did it for love."
Charlayne Alberta Hunter, 22, first Negro girl to graduate from the University of Georgia, married one of the white students she met on campus. She and Walter Stovall, 25, were married "somewhere in the south" last March, but fearing that the ceremony was invalid under Southern anti-miscegnation laws, were remarried in Detroit on June 8, 1963.
Stovall, son of a wealthy Georgia chicken-feed manufacturer, stunned his family. His father mourned that "this is the end of the world."
Charlayne's mother appeared equally resentful. She said: "They didn't ask for my approval."
The newlyweds took refuge in a Greenwich Village apartment, center of New York's Bohemia, and started out to make a new life for themselves. Six months after their Detroit wedding, Charlayne gave birth to a daughter.
Then there is colored opera singer Shirley Verrett married to white artist Louis LoMonaco, British songstress Shirley Bassey to white advertising executive Kenneth Hume, and Paul Robeson, Jr.—son of the famous father—who married Marilyn Greenberg, 21-year-old white girl of Forest Hills, New York.
And last year Twist idol Chubby Checker married Dutch beauty queen Catharina Lodders, who had been crowned Miss World of 1963.
But this sprinkling of celebrity couples are not typical of the fate that awaits mixed marriages between ordinary wage earners. Millionaires can escape at least some of the brickbats hurled at them. The rest have to sit still and take it—as long as they can.
This is the reason why the more thoughtful integration leaders turn thumbs down on the idea of taking integration into marriage. Racial tensions in America are grim enough already without adding the extra strain of mixed matrimony.
Did she really marry the man because he shared her passion for cool rhythm? We put the question to a well-known New York psychologist and he came back with a rather different answer:
"Negro men have a definite sexual attraction for some white women," he explained. "But frequently the women concerned will try and disguise this attraction behind other motives. Music may be one. A crusading spirit may be another.
"And finally there may be a strong revenge motive. The girl may be subconsciously getting even with her family—her teachers—society in general—by committing an act all of them find distasteful. The same may apply to the colored man. By making a white woman his wife he may be getting his revenge on a former slave society that punished such a breach of its rules with death."
These factors are often added to the other hidden pressures that combine to wreck black-white marriages. Under the circumstances it would be almost miraculous if they worked out well—and most of them don't.
Former nightclub singer Kay Eden recently sued for divorce her Canadian husband Marvin Frank, head of three large business corporations. And even the much-publicized marriage of dusky sex bomb Eartha Kitt to white William McDonald seems to have floundered. Latest reports have it that the couple are going to separate.
Defenders of intermarriage may point at the mixed wedlocks that are still staying locked.
Folk singer Harry Belafonte divorced his colored wife in 1957 to marry white Julie Robinson. His was one of the few mixed marriages that were actually welcomed by the girl's family. Said Harry on their wedding day: "We didn't marry to prove any social point. We did it for love."
Charlayne Alberta Hunter, 22, first Negro girl to graduate from the University of Georgia, married one of the white students she met on campus. She and Walter Stovall, 25, were married "somewhere in the south" last March, but fearing that the ceremony was invalid under Southern anti-miscegnation laws, were remarried in Detroit on June 8, 1963.
Stovall, son of a wealthy Georgia chicken-feed manufacturer, stunned his family. His father mourned that "this is the end of the world."
Charlayne's mother appeared equally resentful. She said: "They didn't ask for my approval."
The newlyweds took refuge in a Greenwich Village apartment, center of New York's Bohemia, and started out to make a new life for themselves. Six months after their Detroit wedding, Charlayne gave birth to a daughter.
Then there is colored opera singer Shirley Verrett married to white artist Louis LoMonaco, British songstress Shirley Bassey to white advertising executive Kenneth Hume, and Paul Robeson, Jr.—son of the famous father—who married Marilyn Greenberg, 21-year-old white girl of Forest Hills, New York.
And last year Twist idol Chubby Checker married Dutch beauty queen Catharina Lodders, who had been crowned Miss World of 1963.
But this sprinkling of celebrity couples are not typical of the fate that awaits mixed marriages between ordinary wage earners. Millionaires can escape at least some of the brickbats hurled at them. The rest have to sit still and take it—as long as they can.
This is the reason why the more thoughtful integration leaders turn thumbs down on the idea of taking integration into marriage. Racial tensions in America are grim enough already without adding the extra strain of mixed matrimony.
| (continued from Page 1) |