When I was first in college in
1967-1968, one of my friends fell in love.
Well, many of my friends fell in and out of love throughout the year,
but this friend stayed in love and eventually married her love. The different thing about their love in that
particular time was that she was white and he was black. I was thrilled for
them, it was such fun seeing people who loved each other strongly and the joy they had with each other. I was, and
probably still am the most naïve person around, especially at the age of 18 and
had grown up with no particular prejudices.
My two friends knew that they were facing a tough road not only in
society as it stood at that time at Hiram College in Ohio, but everywhere they
went on from there in the future. My friend was very
afraid that her boyfriend's family would not accept her and he had similar
fears about hers. (Really though isn't this the way in many romances.) They
already were well aware that the college community did not accept them and also
that this was an incredibly tense time in the history of our country. It was in April 1968 that Martin Luther King
was shot and later that year when Robert Kennedy was shot. It seemed that the world was against them and
yet they stayed in love and my perspective was that this was just great.
However, I had several other friends
that did not share my perspective on this couple and the most surprising thing
to me about their objections was that they were black, not the racist whites chastising the races against mixing. So, being the big mouth, naïve person that I
was, I simply asked my friends why they felt that these two falling in love was
a bad thing. The first thing they said
was something of the "party line" of the time (1968), that the black
race needed to stay strong and not mix with other races to achieve the equality
that they were striving for. I could
somewhat understand this, but deep down I knew their perspective had a bit more
"college girl" in it and less "black panther" and I was
right. Some of my black girlfriends soon admitted that they felt bad that this young guy didn't look their way and not
at some white girl. Remember our ages at
the time, 18 and 19 years old, so their perspective was a reaction to the
political issues of the time and also to the just plain dating issues of college.
Over the many, many years that have
passed since I was so young and faced with differing perspectives on this one
issue, I've heard other people state feelings that were similar to my
roommates', but I've also seen more and more multiracial couples making great
lives for themselves and their beautiful children.
I left college after that year, my
education to be continued later, but my two friends, who had fallen in love and
married in that difficult time, ended up right here in RI a couple of years
later, as he was doing a year at Officer Candidate School in the Navy at
Newport. Of course, we got together and
I met their wonderful son. I was still
pretty immature and could not consider what it was like to be married and have
a child, but I still enjoyed the fact that their love had continued to that
point.
