Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo by Mark Mathabane & Gail Mathabane

Author:Mark Mathabane & Gail Mathabane [Mathabane, Mark & Mathabane, Gail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, Ethnic & National, Memoirs, Specific Groups, Women
Amazon: B003WQBICS
Publisher: New Millennium Books
Published: 2010-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

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MARK’S VIEW.

Not too long ago across the South, interracial relationships were not only forbidden by law but black men were often lynched by white mobs on the slightest suspicion of being involved with a white woman. Even after passage of the 1963 Civil Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers continued terrorizing interracial couples and families.

One young man Gail and I met, Trevor Nightingale, was only a toddler in 1974, but he vividly remembers the burning cross. He and his white father and black mother returned to their modest home in York, South Carolina, one night to find a blazing wooden cross in their front yard.

The cross burning was just one incident in a string of harassments meant to drive the family out of town. Trevor’s parents, Charles and Alice, received obscene phone calls and were shouted at from passing cars. Klan members held rallies in a vacant lot near their home.

Charles assured the FBI he would be willing to testify in court, because cross burning without a permit is a federal offense, but the case was mysteriously dropped.

Townspeople spread the rumor that Charles was an ex-convict who had to settle for a black woman when he was unable to get a white wife. When the Nightingales dared to join an all-white square dancing group, they could not find three other couples willing to form a square with them.

When traveling across the state, they were sometimes stopped by suspicious state troopers who asked them questions and checked their identifications.

At that time in York, many businesses illegally maintained separate white and black entrances. York is a small town twenty miles east of Gaflney, the location of Limestone College, the school that I first attended when I arrived in America in 1978.

York was the county seat and had a history of racial bigotry. The races simply did not mix on any level. The only other mixed couple in town could not stand the persecution and fled to nearby Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Believe it or not, my parents actually liked living in York,” eighteen-year-old Trevor said in his deep voice, leaning back in his chair in the Ridgewood, New Jersey, home where he lived with friends of his parents. “My father just laughed at the threats. My parents could not believe people could be so backward and intolerant. My parents were BahT’i pioneers, and felt they were setting a good example for racial harmony simply by being a mixed couple.”

The Bahai Faith is an international religion that strives, through nonracial and nonviolent means, to create world unity and a peaceful society free of all forms of prejudice. It encourages interracial marriage, pointing to it as one of the basic steps toward racial liar-‘ mony and integration.

“As Bahais, we try to love everyone,” Charles explained in a letter to Gail and me. 0Even, at times, the unlovable-the so-called red necks. As a couple these challenging experiences unified and strengthened us. Many fine people approved of what we were doing.

We

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