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The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South
by Kathryn Schumaker
A history of Southern segregationists' long war against interracial relationships, and the century-long fight to restore the freedom to love, marry, and inherit.
Interracial marriage was already illegal in some American colonies as early as the 1690s. But long before the Supreme Court declared that interracial couples had the right to marry in 1967, these families were far from rare. It took decades of hard work by Southern lawmakers and judges to create the illusion that they were, as Tangled Fortunes reveals in this new history of the rise and fall of the domestic color line.
In Tangled Fortunes, historian Kathryn Schumaker narrates how the prohibition of interracial marriage became a priority in segregated states like Mississippi. To prevent white wealth falling into Black hands, state and local authorities papered over the reality of interracial relationships, steered inheritances away from those who did not pass as white, and hardened the lines of racist exclusion. But they could neither erase the longer history of interracial relationships nor suppress the inheritance claims of biracial descendants dating back to the era of slavery.
Tangled Fortunes sheds new light on the ways that interracial families overcame racist laws, uncovered closely kept Southern secrets, and battled to reclaim Black wealth—a fight that continues to this day.
"For generations, Mississippi politicians thundered about racial purity, but experience on the ground was always more complicated. In this marvelous synthesis of legal and social history, Kathryn Schumaker digs beneath the rhetorical surface, exposing the complex, shifting intersection of race, sex, and marriage in the Magnolia State." ―James T. Campbell, author of Middle Passages
This information about Tangled Fortunes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kathryn Schumaker is senior lecturer of American studies at the University of Sydney. The author of Troublemakers: Students' Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s, she lives in Australia.
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