Interracial couples in the South; attitudes are changing on once-illegal marriages of Blacks to Whites

Ebony, June, 1990 by Renee D. Turner

INTERRACIAL COUPLES IN THE SOUTH

GILLIAN Goldson still recalls the shock she felt a few years ago when a stranger whispered "nigger lover" in her ear as she and her husband sipped after-dinner drinks in Forest Park, Ga. After all, they were only two miles south of Atlanta, the crown jewel of the New South.

But now, the name-calling and hostile stares and whispers that the interracial couple endured early in their relationship are not as frequent nor as vicious.

"We're not as much of a novelty anymore," Goldson says, "but there's still people who don't like it." According to the Georgia Vital Records Service, the number of Blacks marrying Whites in Georgia increased by a third in the six years preceding 1988.

The experiences of the Goldsons and other biracial couples indicate that marrying across the color line in the South is not as taboo as it once was. A quarter century ago, such unions were illegal and grounds for public assault and worse. Since that time, the number of interracial marriages nationally has nearly tripled. The number of interracial couples in the South is proportionately small--the Census Bureau reported 28,817 Black/White couples out of 16.7 million couples in 1980--but there are clear indications that White Southerners are becoming accustomed to seeing Blacks and Whites walking, arm in arm, on the streets of Selma, Jackson, Atlanta, Dallas and other Southern cities.

More significantly, marrying across the color line is no longer a barrier to political and economic prominence. Johnny Ford, who is married to a White descendant of an old Alabama family, is mayor of Tuskegee, and interracial marriages have not harmed the careers of Alvin King, a Tennessee state legislator from Memphis, and Nolan Richardson, coach of the championship Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team. Black partners in mixed marriages also sit on newspaper editorial boards in Arkansas, are high school principals in Atlanta, and major city officials in Selma and other Southern communities.

Despite these signs of acceptance, intolerance persists. Some Blacks and Whites report that they have been mysteriously fired after employers discovered their marital status. And an interracial couple, according to the Center for Democratic Renewal, ned only go two miles outside Atlanta to be the victim of attack. Elmo Seay and his White wife, Susan, for example, fled from a suburban Atlanta subdivision after their home was vandalized and firebombed. Another interracial couple, Susan Hill, 29, and her Black husband, John, 36, got so frustrated with the ostracism and rejection by friends, family, landlords and employers that they left Bolivar, Tenn., temporarily and settled in Jackson, Tenn., until the commotion died down. "It was like I had committed a crime," Susan Hill says. "Being from a small town, it just seems it is born and bred in some people that you don't like Blacks, no matter what."

Stares and whispers are the most common form of harassment in some of the more progressive Sun Belt cities like Dallas and Atlanta. To counter these pressures, some couples have organized support groups like the Atlanta-based Interracial Families Alliance. Gillian Goldson, 39, a sales coordinator for a wood products company, and the past president of the Atlanta group, says that she and her husband, David, 37, a real estate developer, and their two children move with relative ease about Atlanta and their country club community in Stone Mountain, Ga., the Atlanta suburb that was reportedly a Klan enclave in the early '50s. But they are not immune to the finger-pointing by elderly Whites, the whispers of "slut" by White women, nor the dagger-like glares from Black women. David Goldson says he suspects that the less-than-kind reaction from Black women stems from the fact that single Black women out-number their male counterparts 3-to-2.

The most hostile reactions by far are to Black men married to White women. Some analysts say this is an age-old resentment, rooted in slavery. Others say it's a more threatening combination to White men than a Black woman/White man relationship. "White people may have become somewhat more tolerant of Black male-White female relationships as long as the White female fits the characteristics of a low socioeconomic status," says Dr. Lena Wright Myer, a social psychologist at Ohio University in Athens. But even the increasing number of Black women married to White men triggers some resentment.

A case in point is Deborah Mathis, an Arkansas Gazette columnist and former Little Rock TV anchor, who asked an elderly White man at a pizza parlor if he had anything to say as he continued to glare at her and her husband, a White music dealer. Also troubling to her husband, Gil Colaianni, 38, she says, was the reaction of a brother-in-law who stopped communicating with him to protest what he termed "race mixing." She says, however, that she didn't marry to make a social statement. Their relationship developed innocently four years ago when she was a vocalist with a band in which he played bass guitar. Black men seem the most adamant in their disapproval of their relationship, giving her a look, she explains, that says, "What, we weren't good enough?"