IF it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed (NYT Editorial)

[kpete]

Op-Ed Contributor
Iowa’s Family Values
By STEVEN W. THRASHER
Published: April 8, 2009

IF it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.

In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)

On their wedding day, somehow, my parents made it out of Nebraska without getting arrested again, and were wed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 1, 1958. This was five years before Nebraska would strike down its laws against interracial marriage, and almost a decade before the Supreme Court would outlaw miscegenation laws throughout the country in Loving v. Virginia.

When the good state of Iowa conferred the dignity of civic recognition on my parents’ relationship — a relationship some members of their own families thought was deviant and immoral, that the civil authorities of Nebraska had tried to destroy, and that even some of my mom’s college-educated friends believed would produce children striped like zebras — our family began. And by the time my father died, their interracial marriage was seen just as a marriage, and an admirable 45-year one at that.

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09thrasher.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

[cali]

1. kick.

this is a great story and a great piece.

[Marrah_G]

2. What a great story

I believe history will make those opposing gay marriage look just like those who fought against civil rights in the 60's.

[Pacifist Patriot]

3. I have to rec that one for a great story and another chance to high-five Iowa.

[JohnnyLib2]

4. Thank you for the wonderful, informative story.

Your family history really captures the bottom line of the whole marriage debate.

I especially like your last sentence, "...seen just as a marriage, and an admirable 45-year one at that."

RFK's quote always comes to mind for so many situations where people like your parents step forward.


"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
Robert Kennedy

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[Froward69]

5. apart from the arrests...

this story is like my siblings' parents story. (same mother different dads, we were raised as full siblings) my mom and their dad never did get married.

the stigma of their relationship cut both ways. both of them were ostracized by both "white" and "black" communities. it was only through the friendship of progressive friends the family stayed together. As friends had to go grocery shopping for my mom. as she was harassed to such an extent she was afraid of ours and her safety... simply by going to the grocery store to feed us.

it was not until the mid 70's that family ties were redone and acceptance (seemingly) became the norm.

later, after deaths of various relatives. When wills revealed long standing bigotry between generations. (essentially my brothers and sister as well as my self were specifically cut out of inheritances.)

thus today, we are more tightly bound than most family's.