October 26, 2022 • 47 mins
1967 was a big year for marriage in America. The Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia overturned bans on interracial marriage in 16 states. The movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner starred Sidney Poitier as a Black doctor engaged to a white woman. And in the middle of it all, Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith, a very private couple who made the cover of Time Magazine for their wedding. Mo talks to Peggy Rusk about their remarkable love story (involving presidents and horses) and to Professor Sheryll Cashin about the surprising history of interracial relationships.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You can get a sense of what the world was
like in nine by looking at the covers of Time
magazine from that year. There's Chairman Mao, the communist leader
of the People's Republic of China whose Cultural revolution had
plunged his country into chaos. General William Westmoreland, commander of
(00:26):
US forces in Vietnam, confident of victory in a war
that was becoming more and more unpopular. Sandy Dennis, whose
performance and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe won her an oscar?
And newlyweds Margaret Rusk and Guy Smith. Okay, I'm pretty
sure you don't recognize those names. Margaret, better known as Peggy,
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was the daughter of then Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Guy Smith, her longtime love. So why were they on
the September seven cover of Time? For the simple reason
that Peggy was white and Guy was black. The headline
reads Mr. And Mrs Guy Smith an interracial marriage. Margaret
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Elizabeth Rusk, only daughter of Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
becomes the wife of Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Guy Gibson Smith,
a Negro. Nineteen sixty seven, it turned out was a
very big year for interracial marriage. In all the field
of race relations, probably nothing is more sensitive than the
issue of inter marriage. That June, in the landmark ruling
(01:34):
of Loving versus Virginia, the Supreme Court struck down state
laws banning it in the United States. Mildred and Richard
Loving had actually gone to jail after getting married. We
were in it because we got married, We loved each
other and gotten married. The Court's decision was unanimous, but
only a fifth of Americans actually approved of interracial marriage,
(01:58):
an attitude that Hollywood was about to address with a
major motion picture. Three Academy Award winners and a bright
young newcomer combine their talents in a love story of today.
In December, the movie Guests Who's Coming to Dinner starred
Sydney Pottier as a black doctor planning to marry a
white woman and delivering the news to his future in
(02:20):
laws played by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy Mrs Drayton.
I'm medically qualified, so I hope you wouldn't think it presumptous.
If I say you want to sit down before you
fall down, he thinks she's going to faint because he's
a Negro. Well I don't think I'm going to fade
(02:40):
in the middle of all of this, a very private
couple thrust into the spotlight. Ms. Rusk and Mr Smith
had obviously thought long and hard about the consequences of
a mixed marriage, but Peggy Rusk Smith says she and
her husband had only one focus as they walked down
the aisle. We didn't get married for any reason. In
(03:01):
the fact that we left it to other. We weren't
trying to prove anything, change anything. Sorry to mean some
more in the truth of it. But the story of
her and her late husband is anything but boring. It
involves romance in turbulent times, presidents, movie stars, and horses.
(03:23):
We'll hear that story and along the way, look back
at the surprising history of interracial relationships in the United States.
From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart I'm Morocca and
this is Mobituaries, this moment Mr and Mrs Smith and
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the year that changed marriage in America. You know, I'll
tell you a funny story about the dress. I've had
it cleaned and boxed and sealed, so it's still in
good shape from when I first and I wore it.
(04:08):
So I thought, well, maybe I should give it to
a thrift shop. And well, whoever I was speaking to, said,
why don't you see if the Smithsonian wants it? And
I said, oh, please, But to make them happy, I
called him into my shock. The Smithsonian does want it, Peggy.
Of course they wanted. This was a big deal. I'm
(04:29):
going to give it to you straight. Peggy Rusk is
not the type of person I'm used to interviewing. She's
the opposite of a hype artist. But don't be fooled.
Her story was remarkable for its time. So let's go
back to when Peggy was eleven and her father became
Secretary of State under President John F. Kennedy. Why did
(04:51):
he accept the job because he was asked. The President
asked him, and he believed, if the President asked you
to do something, you do it to serve your country. Yes,
he didn't want to, but he was asked. The Rusk
family quickly transitioned from a quiet life in Scarsdale, New York,
(05:14):
to a busy life of politics and diplomacy in Washington,
d C. As the daughter of America's top diplomat. Peggy
accompanied her mother to receptions at various embassies. So I
got used to seeing people from all of the world,
all different nationalities and ethnicities and different language, different dress,
(05:36):
difference with normal To me, it was an exciting but
also kind of a lonely time. My parents were gone
all the time. It was very rare for them to
be home. She threw herself into one of her early loves,
horseback riding at Washington's Rock Creek Park, and it was there,
at age fourteen, that she found another love, Guy Smith,
(06:00):
a writing instructor at the Stables. Guy had grown up
in Washington, the only child of an analyst working at
the Pentagon and a teacher. And what was it about him?
Just from his appearance that immediately made you go, WHOA,
He's cute, what can I say? And very sweet, a
gentleman and friendly open A few years older, five years older,
(06:27):
five years older. The age difference didn't seem to face Peggy.
She emphasizes that their relationship began very much as a friendship.
In fact, she saw a number of similarities between Guy's
family and her own, as mother and father were wonderful,
wonderful people, very smart, um well educated. Their house was
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full of books and full of classical music. My father
and Guy's father were like book heads. Guy's parents had
sent him to the progressive Georgetown Day School, integrated at
its founding in when d c's public schools were still segregated.
Guy would go on to attend Georgetown University. But Peggy
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also acknowledges how race made their experiences very different. Guy
had to travel a good distance from his predominantly black
neighborhood of Ladroit Park just to get to the stables
each day. It's it's sad because as our home in
Spring Valley was appreciating, their home where they lived on
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the other sided, city was depreciating, and they couldn't just
live anywhere. They couldn't buy anywhere, and then probably places
wouldn't rent to them. To another difference between the two
where they stood politically well. Guy was a conservative, he
voted for gold Water. Guy was a conservative Republican right
and I was a liberal Democrat. But back then politics
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did not color your life the way for some people now.
Things would eventually progress between the two. At where Else
a horse show, the show had a pair's event where
two writers would compete together, and Guy had come at
the show grants and asked me if I would pair
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with him, Yeah, that must have been exciting. It was exciting.
I was like, yes, sure, But when guy suddenly had
to pair with another girl in the competition, Peggy was
crushed and I left the show grants and started writing,
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this is really a young mind at work. I was
going to ride until he got dark. Have them all
worried about what happened, especially him, worry about what had
happened to me. Yes, you know, so this is just
my payback. You would go missing, I would go missing, yes,
and he would feel guilty. Yes, exactly. It was a
(09:08):
great plan, but unfortunately nobody seemed to realize Peggy was missing.
So I decided, okay, it's time to go back to
the barn. Right. It was totally dark, but no one
was there. I thought, what, they've all come home and
not even noticed that I wasn't back. They were a
horse and they all left, and nobody gives um. You
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know what. I took the horse down, put him in
the stall, and was brushing him with the tears rolling
down my face. I can see it, yes, feeling completely
unloved by every soul. When who should appear? So I'm
in the corner stall and I hear footsteps down, coming
down the cement alway, and you know I'm going to
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like this, trying to clean my face, wiping your tears.
I see that you've been crying, right, And he gets
to the edge of the and he said, would you
like a ride home? Sure? You know this suddenly has
gotten great? Yes? Really great? Even better. On the way home,
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he invited me to go to the or showed dinner
banquet with him. Did you recognize that he was asking
as he was asking you on a date. Yes, well,
to go to the banquet, okay, yes, But before the
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two would set out on their date, Guy felt it
was important to get permission from Peggy's mother. Was it
just that he was very formal? I think he was
very polite and well raised. But I also think he
might have been smart enough to realize that if he
showed himself in person to my mother, if there was
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an issue with the race, she could just say no,
she can't go, and the race is she wouldn't come
up this way. There would be no surprises. Your mother
would know that she was saying, asked to you going
to a banquet with a black man. I thought it
was brilliant in retrospect. Now, remember It's ninety three, the
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year before the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four.
When former President Harry Truman, the man who had signed
the executive Order integrating the armed forces, was asked by
reporters about his thoughts and intermarriage, he replied that he
didn't believe in it, so it wouldn't have been shocking
if Peggy's parents took issue with her daughter dating an
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African American. Was Guy's race ever discussed by you and
your parents? It must have been at some point. Never.
Peggy's parents, she says, were different, particularly her dad, which
is kind of surprising. Dean Rusk was a sub learned
Democrat from Cherokee County, Georgia, the grandson of Confederate soldiers.
(12:06):
As a young boy, he delivered groceries to white families
and the black families who lived literally on the other
side of the tracks. When he would deliver to their
black families, um, everybody would be sitting outside on the
steps because it was hot, and Pop said. He would
sit on the steps and listen to them talk and
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realized that what they said was completely different than what
black people would say when they were around white people.
Looking back, russ would remember that he quote heard their
anger and learned of their hopes, and even at age eight, quote,
I could sense the unfairness of it all. As he
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grew up, he quietly took a stand against racial intolerance.
In two while serving in the War Department's Military Intelligence
off us, he was meeting with Ralph Bunch, a young
analyst who would go on to become a civil rights leader,
a diplomat, and the first African American to win the
Nobel Peace Prize. It was lunchtime and Pap said, let's
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go the captain he gets lunch and Mr. Bunch said, Dan,
you know I can't go eat there. And Pap said, oh, yeah,
we'll see about that. It just went and from that
day on it's disagregated. Now, as Secretary of State, Dean
Rusk's unwavering support of American involvement in Vietnam is a
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permanent part of his legacy. It's in the first line
of his New York Times, Oh Bit, Rusk was on
the wrong side of history on Vietnam, But what's been
forgotten is his equally unstinting support of civil rights. It
wasn't just a moral issue for him, It was also
a foreign policy concern. He believed legalized segregation would keep
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the US from winning the Cold War. And this was
the time when the African nations were being built, and
so there are a lot of new African diplomats in Washington,
But the capital of the Free World welcomed these dignitaries
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with less than open arms. In the early nineteen sixties,
d C remained largely segregated, if not legally, then in practice.
Black diplomats were living and working there, yet often unable
to find housing or be served in many restaurants. Again,
these were diplomats. A Washington Post article from the time
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notes that d C was becoming a hardship post for
these emissaries. The situation outside the city limits was even
worse for diplomats traveling by car between the nation's capital
and the United Nations in New York City. The only
route was a on US Highway forty, which passed for
a stretch through Maryland, a state where businesses were still
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legally permitted to segregate customers or even refused to serve.
African diplomats found themselves ejected from restaurants or unable to
use the bathroom. In nineteen sixty one, the ambassador from
the newly formed country of Chad was refused service as
he tried to get a cup of coffee in a
(15:27):
Maryland diner. The Governor of Maryland apologized after the White
House and Attorney General Robert Kennedy interceded on a personal note.
I find this little known chapter of history particularly disturbing.
I grew up in the nineteen seventies in the Maryland
suburbs outside d C. The sauntering drive down Massachusetts Avenue,
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also known as Embassy Row towards downtown is something I remember,
fondly passing one ornate embassy after another, ring to memorize
the flags outside each one. The people who worked there
were their country's representatives to America. I had no idea
of what black African diplomats were subjected to. Only a
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decade earlier. The troubling and embarrassing situation was summed up
in a powerful speech given by former CBS news anchor
Edward R. Murrow back in May of n Murrow had
recently become Director of the United States Information Agency, and
he delivered a stark warning. It is not only that
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these people are humans like the rest of us, but
that they are leaders of the nations whose friendship this
land deems vital. We would have them join our company
of honorable men and defending against him, Coachman, our dedication
to dignity and freedom, but it is a dignity to
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which we were not fully admit them. And in a
nod cold war tensions, Murrow noted, and let us remember
this is not something that communists did to us. We
do it ourselves in our own capital. Is it possible
that we concern ourselves too much with outer space and
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fireplaces and too little with inner space and nearer places.
Rusk and the State Department knew that these discriminatory actions
were damaging America's reputation overseas. It was a huge problem
for him a Secretary State. I just think it showed
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the United States to behavo critical and not willing to
live up to its own constitution. In Pilla, France, throwing
his support behind the proposed Civil Rights Act, Dean Rusk
testified in a Senate hearing in July of nine three,
sparring with South Carolina Senator Strong Thermond. Do you favor
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the demonstrations that have been held and would you favor
demonstrations in the future. If the civil rights builders not
pays various types of demonstration, I would not wish to
make a blanket statement about all those that I have
known about what I would say this, sir, if I
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were denied what our Nego citizens denied, I would demonstrate. Meanwhile,
his daughter's boyfriend was experiencing discrimination firsthand. We were stopped
at times by the police in d C. In d
C and they would make God get out, make us
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both get out, and they would take forever searching the car,
looking for a reason to arrest him or define him,
or do whatever. And I could see Guy being having
to hold his temper. And it was an uncomfortable time.
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Were you ever tempted to say I'm the daughter of
the Secretary of State? Because that would have been I
kept my mouth set, okay um, But it was not comfortable.
It made guy angry, was it? He? Was it humiliating?
I know it made him angry because I could see
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it in his eyes. I don't know if humiliating the
right word. I think people of color back then, when
they were unjustly treated, we're more angry than humiliated in
spite of the issues they faced. Peggy also acknowledges the
guy's physical appearance was likely a factor in some people
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being more accepting of the relationship. I'm sure that it
made it easier in ways that he was light skinned.
After dating for several years, Peggy and Guy decided they
wanted to get hitched. It was Christmas of nineteen sixty
six when Peggy, home from her freshman year at Stanford,
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told her parents she would be getting married the following year.
He was going to be going off to Vietnam and
I would be eighteen, and um, we didn't ask for
my parents permission. We just said we're going to get
married in September, just like that. But they had no
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idea how big a deal this wedding would be, or
that nineteen seven would prove to be a game changing
year for interracial marriage. After all, an awful lot of
people are going to think that we were a very
shocking pair, Isn't that right? Mrs Straight I know what
you mean. I get that history doesn't move in a
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straight line, but the history of interracial relationships in this
country really moves in zigs and zags. With a number
of famous and not so famous names. We're going to
get to Peggy and Guy's wedding day in a bit,
but I wanted to go back further in time to
really explore how we got to. Is this a story
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that begins and ends in Virginia. Yeah, absolutely it does.
That's Cheryl cash And she's a Georgetown University law professor
and the author of Loving Interracial Intimacy and the Threat
to White Supremacy. She says interracial relationships began in the
earliest years of the Virginia Colony. At the time, she writes,
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there were legal unions between white people and black people
like Tony Longo. Tony long Ago was a very skilled
cattleman when he arrived as a kidnapped en slave person.
By sixtifty two, he owned two acres of land in
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the colony. In the Jamestown Colony, cash And says some
enslaved black people were able to hire themselves out and
buy their freedom for a time. They were then able
to vote, bear arms, and marry, which is what Tony
Longo eventually did, marrying a white englishwoman after obtaining his freedom,
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And he wasn't the only one. There was no prohibition
against interracial marriage at that time. Were they living their
lives fairly openly. Do we know, Yes, it was not illegal.
So this marriage, which was legally sanctioned, underscores that at
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least among the working class people, there wasn't this strict separation.
And you know, there was actually a lot of interracial cooperation,
particularly around resistance to masters. Fearful of free black people
and white indentured servants coming together and rebelling, new laws
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were created to enforce separation, denying black people first the
right to bear arms, then the right to vote. By
interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia. Other colonies and eventually
states would enact similar laws. Still, interracial relationships were happening. Okay,
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quick note, I'm using the word relationship to describe how
two individuals related to each other, not to imply consent.
You probably know the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings,
which by most accounts was non consensual. After all, she
was enslaved by Jefferson at Monticello. But Cheryl cash In
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writes about a relationship between another slaveholding white politician and
a black woman that she describes differently. I consider myself
a presidential history buff, but clearly I need to bone
up on my vice presidential history, because I had no
idea that Martin Van Buren's vice president, Richard Mentor Johnson,
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had an interracial relationship that you described as sort of
a common law marriage. Richard Mentor Johnson actually was one
of the best known politicians of his era, and Johnson
became the center of national attention during the election of
eighteen thirty six when the public became aware of his
(24:37):
common law marriage with Julia Chen, a mixed race woman.
Enslaved by his family, Johnson, from Kentucky had two daughters
with Chen and publicly recognized them as his own. The
daughters lived their lives as free women, both marrying white men.
People were scandalous. What was shocking was that he was
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bringing this out into the open and trying to have
it legitimated because he genuinely loved this woman. Johnson defended
his marriage as quote, under the eyes of God. While
he was serving in Congress, Julia Chinn died. What really
scandalized people about this man is that he continued to
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take up with black women he enslaved. I guess he
had a thing about that. Southern newspapers denounced Richard Mentor
Johnson as the great amalgamationist. As far as I can tell, um,
the relationship with Julia chen was was a benevolent, voluntary relationship,
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but his subsequent sex with other black women, as far
as I could tell, was rape. So I would use
rapist at least for these subsequent relationships. Fast forward to
the post Civil War North and a figure who still
looms large today, the great right or abolitionist Frederick Douglas.
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I had no idea that he had married a white woman.
Never knew this, Really, you didn't know this. Douglas, the
child of a black mother and white father, was married
for over forty years to Anna Murray Douglas, a free
black woman, But in eighteen eighty four, a year and
a half after Anna's death, he married a white suffragist
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named Helen Pitts in Philadelphia, where interracial marriage was legal.
Frederick Douglas emancipated himself not only from slavery, but from
the social constrictions of race. He was the center of
a bi racial abolitionist movement that gave some opportunity to
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actually meet someone on equal terms and equal intellectual terms.
Douglas's marriage caused an uproar, and not just among white people, ball.
A black Washington, d c. Newspaper called it a national calamity.
Black reformer and intellectual book or T. Washington wrote his
own race especially condemned him, and the notion seemed to
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be quite general that he had made the most serious
mistake of his life. Well, this is what happens. You know,
You've been centuries teaching people to stay within lines and
having rules that fortify a color line. It colors the
practices of people on both sides of the line. In
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a letter to a friend, Douglas defended his marriage, asking
what business has the world with the color of my wife?
So ahead of his time? You know, just to say,
I am going to do what my heart tells me
to do, and I'm going to exercise every discretion that
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freedom springs, including who I decided to marry in love.
While Frederick Douglas was able to marry someone of a
different race in the late eighteen hundreds, that was certainly
not the case everywhere. The post Civil War era of
reconstruction had seen the end of some interracial marriage bands,
but in most cases only briefly. The doors would close
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again towards the end of the nineteenth century, as Jim
Crow laws went into effect in the South. In nineteen fifteen,
D W. Griffith's landmark and deeply racist film The Birth
of a Nation was released. In one of its more
infamous scenes, an actor in blackface menaces a Southern white
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woman who leaps to her death rather than submit to him.
This pernicious myth of the black man as a predator
was being perpetuated cash and says as a way of
preventing the races from mixing. From the beginning, that was
a central part of the dogma around race and civil rights.
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You know, the fear that if we give any black freedom,
your daughter is going to end up having sex with
the black man. And how enduring and central the political
debates around race were tied to this question of interracial
marriage and interracial sex. By the mid twentie century, attitudes
had calcified, particularly though not exclusively, in the South. In
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the late nineteen fifties, only four percent of Americans approved
of interracial marriage. Once you put in place an institution
that's animated by an ideology, here the ideology white supremacy.
The ideology continues even after the institution slavery ends. Generation
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after generation is conscripted into this social order which says
you should not cross this line. So those habits continue.
So it's very hard to disrupt something like that. But
disruption finally came in nineteen sixty seven thanks to a
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couple named Richard and Mildred Loving. The story that began
years ago in the farmlands of Caroline County may provide
the landmark decision on interracial marriage. The two had grown
up together in Central Point, a small town in Virginia
with a long history of white and black residents mixing.
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Richard was white, Mildred part black, part Native American. The
two married in nineteen fifty eight, traveling to Washington, d c.
Where they could legally wed. After they took their bows,
the Lovings went home to Virginia. Mr Leving, tell me
what happened after you got married and when did you
first get into trouble with the law. Um, We've been
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married on second day of June, and the police came
after us the fourteenth of July. We married a month.
In a few days, the sheriff of Caroline County and
his deputies burst into the Loving's house in the middle
of the night, arresting the couple in their bedroom. Mrs Loving.
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What has been the worst part about all this for you? Well,
I guess the worst thing that was in the middle
time in jail. That's the worst thing. The two were
sentenced to a year in prison, but the sentences were
suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not
returned together for twenty five years. The Lovings began raising
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their family in Washington, d c. But after several years,
Mildred had had enough. She wanted to live in Virginia
with her husband and their children and without fear. The
A c. L U took the Lovings case and began
a legal battle that would go all the way to
the Supreme Court in nine sixty seven. You couldn't ask
for a better case, the Lovings. You know, this is
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like something out of a movie, right, the Lovings. In
June of that year, the Court decided in the Loving's favor,
a unanimous decision ruling that the bands on interracial marriage,
which still existed in sixteen states, were unconstitutional. These are
not people who would want to be public figures. But
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it was their deep love for each other and just
wanting the right to live in the community they love
with the person they love that made them persevere, and
only three months later Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith would
walk down the aisle and onto a magazine cover the
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Loving versus Virginia case. Were you following that at all?
Were you even aware of it? Vaguely? So you didn't
think this thing that's happening kind of applies to me.
They wouldn't have changed your mind. We were going to
get married regardless. As their wedding day approached, Peggy Ruskin
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Guy Smith had managed to stay under the radar even
as the country was debating the propriety and legality of
interracial marriage, a blessed privacy which lasted almost till the
moment they walked out of the Stanford University chapel as
man and wife. On September one, Peggy Ruskin Guy Smith
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were married. Newsreels show the couple emerging from the chapel
at Stanford with smiles on their faces. I think some
of the press coverage said that no one seemed less
anxious than you and Guy, that you were utterly at ease,
were completely but still your eighteen You're walking out of
(33:58):
a chapel and there is a phalanx of press there.
Did that set you back on your heels a little bit,
you just want with it. The wedding took place in
front of about sixty guests, including the bride and groom's parents,
but several of Dean Rusk's Georgia relatives refused to attend.
(34:20):
Was their disapproval from some members of the family. I'm
sure Papa told don't ever show up at a family
union again. That's a pretty clear message if the condemnation
of his relatives bothered him. Dean Rusk was not one
to share the secretary please, thank you. But according to Peggy,
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her father was concerned that his daughter's marriage might create
problems for President Johnson by risking crucial support from Southerners
in Congress, and so, she says, he made a dramatic
proposal of his own to the commander in chief. My
father went to President Johnson before we got married and
offered his resignation, and Johnson said, forget it. You know,
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I didn't buy the Johnson at all. Did you know
that your father had done that not till afterwards. And
what did you think when you heard that? It's like Pop, too,
serve the man he's supposed to be serving, and be
honest with him about all things. So it was very
much in character. This was a very joyous wedding. There
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was no gloom. And I would go further and say
that this maybe a stride in the direction that we
all need to be taking with it's very difficult business
of race relations and this area in particular. That's Reverend
be Davy Napier, the dean of the Stanford Chapel, who
(35:52):
officiated Peggy and Guy's wedding, talking to CBS News, and
he was right. There was a lot of joy, but
there was also a lot of hate. I showed up
at Stanford on Monday, Monday after we got married. They
were huge, big male sacks of mail, you know, the
(36:12):
big canvas sacks full of mail. We'd sit on the
floor and we'd open letters, and you know, it was
pretty easy to tell which were positive, which are negative?
What was the ratio about about seventy five negative? And
the negatives were usually really thick and full of Bible
(36:34):
versus verses and stuff like that. Did any of the
nasty e Maale scare you really? Did they include threats? Oh? Yeah?
Did you did you report any of those letters? Yeah?
Peggy and Guy took it all in stride. The bad
with the good, and perhaps the most surprising moment of all,
(36:57):
a week after the wedding, they realized they were on
the cover of Time magazine. Time magazine was a big
deal back then. You're on the cover of it. Did
you know you were going to be on the covered floor?
So this hit news stands and you went, that's me
and my husband remembering The Godfather when they're walking down
(37:19):
the street and they see the headline if what's his name?
The men guy getting shot? Right? And they stopped and
go back and look like that. That was us with
that magazine. We had no idea and we're walking down
the street and all of a sudden, please see a
news stand? As you're kidding me? Can I just tell
(37:42):
you by the way I held my breath waiting for
which scene in The Godfather you were going to site?
Thank goodness, it wasn't the Horsehead. No, no, no. Did
you immediately buy a copy and read a copy? We
probably bought ten. They had captured the public's attention so
much so that when a major motion picture about interracial
(38:03):
marriage premiered a few months later, the film would get
an unexpected boost of publicity thanks to the extensive coverage
of Peggy and Guy's nuptials. As writer Mark Harris notes
in his book Pictures at a Revolution, the wedding quote
brought the subject of interracial marriage to the forefront of
the national conversation about race, or, as it was bluntly
(38:25):
put by New York Post critic Archer Winston, the Dean
Rusk family appears to have fronted for this very film.
God that film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with a
(38:47):
star studded cast of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role,
Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier, along with Hepburn's niece Katherine Houghton.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was the story of a white,
liberal San Francisco couple forced to confront their own prejudices
when their daughter comes home with the black man she
intends to marry. And it never occurred to me that
(39:09):
I might fall in love with a Negro. But I did.
And nothing in the world is going to change that.
Even if you had any objections, I wouldn't let him go. Now,
if you are the governor of Alabama. Guess Who's Coming
to Dinner was filmed before the Loving Versus Virginia decision
came down, hence some of the references that had already
fallen out of date. Have you thought what people would
(39:31):
say about you? Why in sixteen and seventeen states you
would be breaking the law, You'd be criminals, and say
they changed the law. That don't change the way people
feel about this thing. The movie ends with a stirring
speech by Spencer Tracy. It might seem a little hokey today,
but it's still a powerful moment, especially given it was
Tracy's last moment on screen. He would die just seventeen
(39:55):
days after filming. I'm sure you know what you're up against.
There will be a hundred million people right here in
this country will be shocked and offended and appalled at
the two of you, And the two of you will
just have to ride that out, maybe every day for
(40:16):
the rest of your lives. You can try to ignore
those people. Are you gonna feel sorry for them and
for their prejudices and their bigotry and their blind hatreds
and stupid fears. But we're necessary. You'll just have to
cling tight to each other and say, screw all those people,
(40:40):
Guess who's coming to dinner. It was a big hit
with audiences. In a little over a year, it was
on varieties list of all time box office winners in
the company have gone with the Wind and the Sound
of Music. The movie was an Awards darling as well,
getting nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and winning
(41:00):
a Major Acting Award coincidentally presented by Sydney Poitier. The
winner is Katherine Hepburn and guest Who's Brother. Which is
not to say everyone loved it. Life magazine's film critic
would call the movie an inescapably sentimental occasion. Another person
(41:21):
who wasn't a fan, Peggy Rusk, I saw the movie.
I didn't relate to it. I thought they made too
big a deal about the race. That wasn't how we
felt at all. That was actually kind of bored. There
(41:42):
are some great performances that I'm a When Guy was
deployed as a helicopter pilot to Vietnam after their wedding,
he and Peggy wrote to each other every single day,
even after his return. If he was away for a
few days, they would write each other. The letters are
heartfelt and tender. I love you with all my heart
(42:06):
and consider myself the happiest and luckiest girl in the world. So, Darling,
I guess that's why I don't fall apart when you
have to be away. It's because you are so much
a part of my soul that even when you are
three thousand miles away, I still feel like you are
within me. Take care of lover, and don't work too hard.
(42:29):
I love you very very much and can't wait to
be in your arms again. I love Peggy. Guy and
Peggy had a daughter, two grandchildren, and it seems a
very happy life. The couple had been married for nearly
forty five years when Guy died in at age sixty seven.
(42:51):
At the end, he was suffering from dementia. Then he
got to the point where he um really wouldn't recognize
or too much of anything. But I was the one
person he still recognized. He he never stopped recognizing. He
(43:15):
never stopped recognizing me. Was was he able to speak
a little bit? And his last words, because he died
at home in bed, I was holding him, and his
last conscious words were to apologize for leaving me alone.
(43:38):
So Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith became a part of
our cultural history because of what people saw of their
marriage from the outside. Two people with different skin colors.
But ultimately this was a love story, this story which
(44:01):
a lot of people would use the word hard to
describe what that must have been hard that part, you know,
it must have been difficult, and you're telling of it.
It was just so easy. It was easy. It doesn't
need to be hard, is that to love? You know?
(44:25):
If the love is there and if it's real, it's
all that matters, and it's really powerful, and people just
need to stop more in the mouths other stuff and
just it's been a lot more time loving. It's not
that hard and it's well worth it. A final note,
(44:49):
Peggy told me that if her wedding happened today, it
wouldn't be a big story at all, and she's probably right.
Remember earlier I mentioned that in the late fifties only
four percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage, as that
number had grown to I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary.
(45:17):
May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here. All
new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday wherever you get your
podcasts and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the
New York Times best selling book, now available in paperback
(45:40):
and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast.
This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Zoe Marcus and
Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez,
Cacceto and me Morocca. It was edited by Moral Walls
and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr.
(46:04):
Our production company is Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer
is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie
Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to
a Lilia Bundle's, Young Kim Mary Gardner, Mcgeehey, Zebulon Muletski
(46:28):
and Alberto Robina. Mobituary's senior producer is the Unconquerable Aaron
Shrank and Shrank. Executive producers for the series include Steve raiz,
He's and Morocca. Mobituaries was created by Yours Truly and
as always on dying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John
carp for helping breathe life into mobituaries,
You can get a sense of what the world was
like in nine by looking at the covers of Time
magazine from that year. There's Chairman Mao, the communist leader
of the People's Republic of China whose Cultural revolution had
plunged his country into chaos. General William Westmoreland, commander of
(00:26):
US forces in Vietnam, confident of victory in a war
that was becoming more and more unpopular. Sandy Dennis, whose
performance and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe won her an oscar?
And newlyweds Margaret Rusk and Guy Smith. Okay, I'm pretty
sure you don't recognize those names. Margaret, better known as Peggy,
(00:47):
was the daughter of then Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Guy Smith, her longtime love. So why were they on
the September seven cover of Time? For the simple reason
that Peggy was white and Guy was black. The headline
reads Mr. And Mrs Guy Smith an interracial marriage. Margaret
(01:12):
Elizabeth Rusk, only daughter of Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
becomes the wife of Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Guy Gibson Smith,
a Negro. Nineteen sixty seven, it turned out was a
very big year for interracial marriage. In all the field
of race relations, probably nothing is more sensitive than the
issue of inter marriage. That June, in the landmark ruling
(01:34):
of Loving versus Virginia, the Supreme Court struck down state
laws banning it in the United States. Mildred and Richard
Loving had actually gone to jail after getting married. We
were in it because we got married, We loved each
other and gotten married. The Court's decision was unanimous, but
only a fifth of Americans actually approved of interracial marriage,
(01:58):
an attitude that Hollywood was about to address with a
major motion picture. Three Academy Award winners and a bright
young newcomer combine their talents in a love story of today.
In December, the movie Guests Who's Coming to Dinner starred
Sydney Pottier as a black doctor planning to marry a
white woman and delivering the news to his future in
(02:20):
laws played by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy Mrs Drayton.
I'm medically qualified, so I hope you wouldn't think it presumptous.
If I say you want to sit down before you
fall down, he thinks she's going to faint because he's
a Negro. Well I don't think I'm going to fade
(02:40):
in the middle of all of this, a very private
couple thrust into the spotlight. Ms. Rusk and Mr Smith
had obviously thought long and hard about the consequences of
a mixed marriage, but Peggy Rusk Smith says she and
her husband had only one focus as they walked down
the aisle. We didn't get married for any reason. In
(03:01):
the fact that we left it to other. We weren't
trying to prove anything, change anything. Sorry to mean some
more in the truth of it. But the story of
her and her late husband is anything but boring. It
involves romance in turbulent times, presidents, movie stars, and horses.
(03:23):
We'll hear that story and along the way, look back
at the surprising history of interracial relationships in the United States.
From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart I'm Morocca and
this is Mobituaries, this moment Mr and Mrs Smith and
(03:48):
the year that changed marriage in America. You know, I'll
tell you a funny story about the dress. I've had
it cleaned and boxed and sealed, so it's still in
good shape from when I first and I wore it.
(04:08):
So I thought, well, maybe I should give it to
a thrift shop. And well, whoever I was speaking to, said,
why don't you see if the Smithsonian wants it? And
I said, oh, please, But to make them happy, I
called him into my shock. The Smithsonian does want it, Peggy.
Of course they wanted. This was a big deal. I'm
(04:29):
going to give it to you straight. Peggy Rusk is
not the type of person I'm used to interviewing. She's
the opposite of a hype artist. But don't be fooled.
Her story was remarkable for its time. So let's go
back to when Peggy was eleven and her father became
Secretary of State under President John F. Kennedy. Why did
(04:51):
he accept the job because he was asked. The President
asked him, and he believed, if the President asked you
to do something, you do it to serve your country. Yes,
he didn't want to, but he was asked. The Rusk
family quickly transitioned from a quiet life in Scarsdale, New York,
(05:14):
to a busy life of politics and diplomacy in Washington,
d C. As the daughter of America's top diplomat. Peggy
accompanied her mother to receptions at various embassies. So I
got used to seeing people from all of the world,
all different nationalities and ethnicities and different language, different dress,
(05:36):
difference with normal To me, it was an exciting but
also kind of a lonely time. My parents were gone
all the time. It was very rare for them to
be home. She threw herself into one of her early loves,
horseback riding at Washington's Rock Creek Park, and it was there,
at age fourteen, that she found another love, Guy Smith,
(06:00):
a writing instructor at the Stables. Guy had grown up
in Washington, the only child of an analyst working at
the Pentagon and a teacher. And what was it about him?
Just from his appearance that immediately made you go, WHOA,
He's cute, what can I say? And very sweet, a
gentleman and friendly open A few years older, five years older,
(06:27):
five years older. The age difference didn't seem to face Peggy.
She emphasizes that their relationship began very much as a friendship.
In fact, she saw a number of similarities between Guy's
family and her own, as mother and father were wonderful,
wonderful people, very smart, um well educated. Their house was
(06:52):
full of books and full of classical music. My father
and Guy's father were like book heads. Guy's parents had
sent him to the progressive Georgetown Day School, integrated at
its founding in when d c's public schools were still segregated.
Guy would go on to attend Georgetown University. But Peggy
(07:15):
also acknowledges how race made their experiences very different. Guy
had to travel a good distance from his predominantly black
neighborhood of Ladroit Park just to get to the stables
each day. It's it's sad because as our home in
Spring Valley was appreciating, their home where they lived on
(07:37):
the other sided, city was depreciating, and they couldn't just
live anywhere. They couldn't buy anywhere, and then probably places
wouldn't rent to them. To another difference between the two
where they stood politically well. Guy was a conservative, he
voted for gold Water. Guy was a conservative Republican right
and I was a liberal Democrat. But back then politics
(08:00):
did not color your life the way for some people now.
Things would eventually progress between the two. At where Else
a horse show, the show had a pair's event where
two writers would compete together, and Guy had come at
the show grants and asked me if I would pair
(08:21):
with him, Yeah, that must have been exciting. It was exciting.
I was like, yes, sure, But when guy suddenly had
to pair with another girl in the competition, Peggy was
crushed and I left the show grants and started writing,
(08:42):
this is really a young mind at work. I was
going to ride until he got dark. Have them all
worried about what happened, especially him, worry about what had
happened to me. Yes, you know, so this is just
my payback. You would go missing, I would go missing, yes,
and he would feel guilty. Yes, exactly. It was a
(09:08):
great plan, but unfortunately nobody seemed to realize Peggy was missing.
So I decided, okay, it's time to go back to
the barn. Right. It was totally dark, but no one
was there. I thought, what, they've all come home and
not even noticed that I wasn't back. They were a
horse and they all left, and nobody gives um. You
(09:29):
know what. I took the horse down, put him in
the stall, and was brushing him with the tears rolling
down my face. I can see it, yes, feeling completely
unloved by every soul. When who should appear? So I'm
in the corner stall and I hear footsteps down, coming
down the cement alway, and you know I'm going to
(09:53):
like this, trying to clean my face, wiping your tears.
I see that you've been crying, right, And he gets
to the edge of the and he said, would you
like a ride home? Sure? You know this suddenly has
gotten great? Yes? Really great? Even better. On the way home,
(10:14):
he invited me to go to the or showed dinner
banquet with him. Did you recognize that he was asking
as he was asking you on a date. Yes, well,
to go to the banquet, okay, yes, But before the
(10:34):
two would set out on their date, Guy felt it
was important to get permission from Peggy's mother. Was it
just that he was very formal? I think he was
very polite and well raised. But I also think he
might have been smart enough to realize that if he
showed himself in person to my mother, if there was
(10:54):
an issue with the race, she could just say no,
she can't go, and the race is she wouldn't come
up this way. There would be no surprises. Your mother
would know that she was saying, asked to you going
to a banquet with a black man. I thought it
was brilliant in retrospect. Now, remember It's ninety three, the
(11:19):
year before the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four.
When former President Harry Truman, the man who had signed
the executive Order integrating the armed forces, was asked by
reporters about his thoughts and intermarriage, he replied that he
didn't believe in it, so it wouldn't have been shocking
if Peggy's parents took issue with her daughter dating an
(11:41):
African American. Was Guy's race ever discussed by you and
your parents? It must have been at some point. Never.
Peggy's parents, she says, were different, particularly her dad, which
is kind of surprising. Dean Rusk was a sub learned
Democrat from Cherokee County, Georgia, the grandson of Confederate soldiers.
(12:06):
As a young boy, he delivered groceries to white families
and the black families who lived literally on the other
side of the tracks. When he would deliver to their
black families, um, everybody would be sitting outside on the
steps because it was hot, and Pop said. He would
sit on the steps and listen to them talk and
(12:28):
realized that what they said was completely different than what
black people would say when they were around white people.
Looking back, russ would remember that he quote heard their
anger and learned of their hopes, and even at age eight, quote,
I could sense the unfairness of it all. As he
(12:50):
grew up, he quietly took a stand against racial intolerance.
In two while serving in the War Department's Military Intelligence
off us, he was meeting with Ralph Bunch, a young
analyst who would go on to become a civil rights leader,
a diplomat, and the first African American to win the
Nobel Peace Prize. It was lunchtime and Pap said, let's
(13:13):
go the captain he gets lunch and Mr. Bunch said, Dan,
you know I can't go eat there. And Pap said, oh, yeah,
we'll see about that. It just went and from that
day on it's disagregated. Now, as Secretary of State, Dean
Rusk's unwavering support of American involvement in Vietnam is a
(13:34):
permanent part of his legacy. It's in the first line
of his New York Times, Oh Bit, Rusk was on
the wrong side of history on Vietnam, But what's been
forgotten is his equally unstinting support of civil rights. It
wasn't just a moral issue for him, It was also
a foreign policy concern. He believed legalized segregation would keep
(13:57):
the US from winning the Cold War. And this was
the time when the African nations were being built, and
so there are a lot of new African diplomats in Washington,
But the capital of the Free World welcomed these dignitaries
(14:21):
with less than open arms. In the early nineteen sixties,
d C remained largely segregated, if not legally, then in practice.
Black diplomats were living and working there, yet often unable
to find housing or be served in many restaurants. Again,
these were diplomats. A Washington Post article from the time
(14:43):
notes that d C was becoming a hardship post for
these emissaries. The situation outside the city limits was even
worse for diplomats traveling by car between the nation's capital
and the United Nations in New York City. The only
route was a on US Highway forty, which passed for
a stretch through Maryland, a state where businesses were still
(15:07):
legally permitted to segregate customers or even refused to serve.
African diplomats found themselves ejected from restaurants or unable to
use the bathroom. In nineteen sixty one, the ambassador from
the newly formed country of Chad was refused service as
he tried to get a cup of coffee in a
(15:27):
Maryland diner. The Governor of Maryland apologized after the White
House and Attorney General Robert Kennedy interceded on a personal note.
I find this little known chapter of history particularly disturbing.
I grew up in the nineteen seventies in the Maryland
suburbs outside d C. The sauntering drive down Massachusetts Avenue,
(15:51):
also known as Embassy Row towards downtown is something I remember,
fondly passing one ornate embassy after another, ring to memorize
the flags outside each one. The people who worked there
were their country's representatives to America. I had no idea
of what black African diplomats were subjected to. Only a
(16:12):
decade earlier. The troubling and embarrassing situation was summed up
in a powerful speech given by former CBS news anchor
Edward R. Murrow back in May of n Murrow had
recently become Director of the United States Information Agency, and
he delivered a stark warning. It is not only that
(16:34):
these people are humans like the rest of us, but
that they are leaders of the nations whose friendship this
land deems vital. We would have them join our company
of honorable men and defending against him, Coachman, our dedication
to dignity and freedom, but it is a dignity to
(16:57):
which we were not fully admit them. And in a
nod cold war tensions, Murrow noted, and let us remember
this is not something that communists did to us. We
do it ourselves in our own capital. Is it possible
that we concern ourselves too much with outer space and
(17:21):
fireplaces and too little with inner space and nearer places.
Rusk and the State Department knew that these discriminatory actions
were damaging America's reputation overseas. It was a huge problem
for him a Secretary State. I just think it showed
(17:42):
the United States to behavo critical and not willing to
live up to its own constitution. In Pilla, France, throwing
his support behind the proposed Civil Rights Act, Dean Rusk
testified in a Senate hearing in July of nine three,
sparring with South Carolina Senator Strong Thermond. Do you favor
(18:06):
the demonstrations that have been held and would you favor
demonstrations in the future. If the civil rights builders not
pays various types of demonstration, I would not wish to
make a blanket statement about all those that I have
known about what I would say this, sir, if I
(18:27):
were denied what our Nego citizens denied, I would demonstrate. Meanwhile,
his daughter's boyfriend was experiencing discrimination firsthand. We were stopped
at times by the police in d C. In d
C and they would make God get out, make us
(18:47):
both get out, and they would take forever searching the car,
looking for a reason to arrest him or define him,
or do whatever. And I could see Guy being having
to hold his temper. And it was an uncomfortable time.
(19:07):
Were you ever tempted to say I'm the daughter of
the Secretary of State? Because that would have been I
kept my mouth set, okay um, But it was not comfortable.
It made guy angry, was it? He? Was it humiliating?
I know it made him angry because I could see
(19:28):
it in his eyes. I don't know if humiliating the
right word. I think people of color back then, when
they were unjustly treated, we're more angry than humiliated in
spite of the issues they faced. Peggy also acknowledges the
guy's physical appearance was likely a factor in some people
(19:51):
being more accepting of the relationship. I'm sure that it
made it easier in ways that he was light skinned.
After dating for several years, Peggy and Guy decided they
wanted to get hitched. It was Christmas of nineteen sixty
six when Peggy, home from her freshman year at Stanford,
(20:11):
told her parents she would be getting married the following year.
He was going to be going off to Vietnam and
I would be eighteen, and um, we didn't ask for
my parents permission. We just said we're going to get
married in September, just like that. But they had no
(20:32):
idea how big a deal this wedding would be, or
that nineteen seven would prove to be a game changing
year for interracial marriage. After all, an awful lot of
people are going to think that we were a very
shocking pair, Isn't that right? Mrs Straight I know what
you mean. I get that history doesn't move in a
(21:03):
straight line, but the history of interracial relationships in this
country really moves in zigs and zags. With a number
of famous and not so famous names. We're going to
get to Peggy and Guy's wedding day in a bit,
but I wanted to go back further in time to
really explore how we got to. Is this a story
(21:24):
that begins and ends in Virginia. Yeah, absolutely it does.
That's Cheryl cash And she's a Georgetown University law professor
and the author of Loving Interracial Intimacy and the Threat
to White Supremacy. She says interracial relationships began in the
earliest years of the Virginia Colony. At the time, she writes,
(21:46):
there were legal unions between white people and black people
like Tony Longo. Tony long Ago was a very skilled
cattleman when he arrived as a kidnapped en slave person.
By sixtifty two, he owned two acres of land in
(22:07):
the colony. In the Jamestown Colony, cash And says some
enslaved black people were able to hire themselves out and
buy their freedom for a time. They were then able
to vote, bear arms, and marry, which is what Tony
Longo eventually did, marrying a white englishwoman after obtaining his freedom,
(22:28):
And he wasn't the only one. There was no prohibition
against interracial marriage at that time. Were they living their
lives fairly openly. Do we know, Yes, it was not illegal.
So this marriage, which was legally sanctioned, underscores that at
(22:48):
least among the working class people, there wasn't this strict separation.
And you know, there was actually a lot of interracial cooperation,
particularly around resistance to masters. Fearful of free black people
and white indentured servants coming together and rebelling, new laws
(23:11):
were created to enforce separation, denying black people first the
right to bear arms, then the right to vote. By
interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia. Other colonies and eventually
states would enact similar laws. Still, interracial relationships were happening. Okay,
(23:32):
quick note, I'm using the word relationship to describe how
two individuals related to each other, not to imply consent.
You probably know the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings,
which by most accounts was non consensual. After all, she
was enslaved by Jefferson at Monticello. But Cheryl cash In
(23:54):
writes about a relationship between another slaveholding white politician and
a black woman that she describes differently. I consider myself
a presidential history buff, but clearly I need to bone
up on my vice presidential history, because I had no
idea that Martin Van Buren's vice president, Richard Mentor Johnson,
(24:14):
had an interracial relationship that you described as sort of
a common law marriage. Richard Mentor Johnson actually was one
of the best known politicians of his era, and Johnson
became the center of national attention during the election of
eighteen thirty six when the public became aware of his
(24:37):
common law marriage with Julia Chen, a mixed race woman.
Enslaved by his family, Johnson, from Kentucky had two daughters
with Chen and publicly recognized them as his own. The
daughters lived their lives as free women, both marrying white men.
People were scandalous. What was shocking was that he was
(24:58):
bringing this out into the open and trying to have
it legitimated because he genuinely loved this woman. Johnson defended
his marriage as quote, under the eyes of God. While
he was serving in Congress, Julia Chinn died. What really
scandalized people about this man is that he continued to
(25:20):
take up with black women he enslaved. I guess he
had a thing about that. Southern newspapers denounced Richard Mentor
Johnson as the great amalgamationist. As far as I can tell, um,
the relationship with Julia chen was was a benevolent, voluntary relationship,
(25:42):
but his subsequent sex with other black women, as far
as I could tell, was rape. So I would use
rapist at least for these subsequent relationships. Fast forward to
the post Civil War North and a figure who still
looms large today, the great right or abolitionist Frederick Douglas.
(26:05):
I had no idea that he had married a white woman.
Never knew this, Really, you didn't know this. Douglas, the
child of a black mother and white father, was married
for over forty years to Anna Murray Douglas, a free
black woman, But in eighteen eighty four, a year and
a half after Anna's death, he married a white suffragist
(26:27):
named Helen Pitts in Philadelphia, where interracial marriage was legal.
Frederick Douglas emancipated himself not only from slavery, but from
the social constrictions of race. He was the center of
a bi racial abolitionist movement that gave some opportunity to
(26:50):
actually meet someone on equal terms and equal intellectual terms.
Douglas's marriage caused an uproar, and not just among white people, ball.
A black Washington, d c. Newspaper called it a national calamity.
Black reformer and intellectual book or T. Washington wrote his
own race especially condemned him, and the notion seemed to
(27:13):
be quite general that he had made the most serious
mistake of his life. Well, this is what happens. You know,
You've been centuries teaching people to stay within lines and
having rules that fortify a color line. It colors the
practices of people on both sides of the line. In
(27:37):
a letter to a friend, Douglas defended his marriage, asking
what business has the world with the color of my wife?
So ahead of his time? You know, just to say,
I am going to do what my heart tells me
to do, and I'm going to exercise every discretion that
(27:57):
freedom springs, including who I decided to marry in love.
While Frederick Douglas was able to marry someone of a
different race in the late eighteen hundreds, that was certainly
not the case everywhere. The post Civil War era of
reconstruction had seen the end of some interracial marriage bands,
but in most cases only briefly. The doors would close
(28:21):
again towards the end of the nineteenth century, as Jim
Crow laws went into effect in the South. In nineteen fifteen,
D W. Griffith's landmark and deeply racist film The Birth
of a Nation was released. In one of its more
infamous scenes, an actor in blackface menaces a Southern white
(28:43):
woman who leaps to her death rather than submit to him.
This pernicious myth of the black man as a predator
was being perpetuated cash and says as a way of
preventing the races from mixing. From the beginning, that was
a central part of the dogma around race and civil rights.
(29:05):
You know, the fear that if we give any black freedom,
your daughter is going to end up having sex with
the black man. And how enduring and central the political
debates around race were tied to this question of interracial
marriage and interracial sex. By the mid twentie century, attitudes
had calcified, particularly though not exclusively, in the South. In
(29:29):
the late nineteen fifties, only four percent of Americans approved
of interracial marriage. Once you put in place an institution
that's animated by an ideology, here the ideology white supremacy.
The ideology continues even after the institution slavery ends. Generation
(29:51):
after generation is conscripted into this social order which says
you should not cross this line. So those habits continue.
So it's very hard to disrupt something like that. But
disruption finally came in nineteen sixty seven thanks to a
(30:13):
couple named Richard and Mildred Loving. The story that began
years ago in the farmlands of Caroline County may provide
the landmark decision on interracial marriage. The two had grown
up together in Central Point, a small town in Virginia
with a long history of white and black residents mixing.
(30:34):
Richard was white, Mildred part black, part Native American. The
two married in nineteen fifty eight, traveling to Washington, d c.
Where they could legally wed. After they took their bows,
the Lovings went home to Virginia. Mr Leving, tell me
what happened after you got married and when did you
first get into trouble with the law. Um, We've been
(30:59):
married on second day of June, and the police came
after us the fourteenth of July. We married a month.
In a few days, the sheriff of Caroline County and
his deputies burst into the Loving's house in the middle
of the night, arresting the couple in their bedroom. Mrs Loving.
(31:19):
What has been the worst part about all this for you? Well,
I guess the worst thing that was in the middle
time in jail. That's the worst thing. The two were
sentenced to a year in prison, but the sentences were
suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not
returned together for twenty five years. The Lovings began raising
(31:41):
their family in Washington, d c. But after several years,
Mildred had had enough. She wanted to live in Virginia
with her husband and their children and without fear. The
A c. L U took the Lovings case and began
a legal battle that would go all the way to
the Supreme Court in nine sixty seven. You couldn't ask
for a better case, the Lovings. You know, this is
(32:05):
like something out of a movie, right, the Lovings. In
June of that year, the Court decided in the Loving's favor,
a unanimous decision ruling that the bands on interracial marriage,
which still existed in sixteen states, were unconstitutional. These are
not people who would want to be public figures. But
(32:27):
it was their deep love for each other and just
wanting the right to live in the community they love
with the person they love that made them persevere, and
only three months later Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith would
walk down the aisle and onto a magazine cover the
(32:52):
Loving versus Virginia case. Were you following that at all?
Were you even aware of it? Vaguely? So you didn't
think this thing that's happening kind of applies to me.
They wouldn't have changed your mind. We were going to
get married regardless. As their wedding day approached, Peggy Ruskin
(33:16):
Guy Smith had managed to stay under the radar even
as the country was debating the propriety and legality of
interracial marriage, a blessed privacy which lasted almost till the
moment they walked out of the Stanford University chapel as
man and wife. On September one, Peggy Ruskin Guy Smith
(33:38):
were married. Newsreels show the couple emerging from the chapel
at Stanford with smiles on their faces. I think some
of the press coverage said that no one seemed less
anxious than you and Guy, that you were utterly at ease,
were completely but still your eighteen You're walking out of
(33:58):
a chapel and there is a phalanx of press there.
Did that set you back on your heels a little bit,
you just want with it. The wedding took place in
front of about sixty guests, including the bride and groom's parents,
but several of Dean Rusk's Georgia relatives refused to attend.
(34:20):
Was their disapproval from some members of the family. I'm
sure Papa told don't ever show up at a family
union again. That's a pretty clear message if the condemnation
of his relatives bothered him. Dean Rusk was not one
to share the secretary please, thank you. But according to Peggy,
(34:42):
her father was concerned that his daughter's marriage might create
problems for President Johnson by risking crucial support from Southerners
in Congress, and so, she says, he made a dramatic
proposal of his own to the commander in chief. My
father went to President Johnson before we got married and
offered his resignation, and Johnson said, forget it. You know,
(35:07):
I didn't buy the Johnson at all. Did you know
that your father had done that not till afterwards. And
what did you think when you heard that? It's like Pop, too,
serve the man he's supposed to be serving, and be
honest with him about all things. So it was very
much in character. This was a very joyous wedding. There
(35:30):
was no gloom. And I would go further and say
that this maybe a stride in the direction that we
all need to be taking with it's very difficult business
of race relations and this area in particular. That's Reverend
be Davy Napier, the dean of the Stanford Chapel, who
(35:52):
officiated Peggy and Guy's wedding, talking to CBS News, and
he was right. There was a lot of joy, but
there was also a lot of hate. I showed up
at Stanford on Monday, Monday after we got married. They
were huge, big male sacks of mail, you know, the
(36:12):
big canvas sacks full of mail. We'd sit on the
floor and we'd open letters, and you know, it was
pretty easy to tell which were positive, which are negative?
What was the ratio about about seventy five negative? And
the negatives were usually really thick and full of Bible
(36:34):
versus verses and stuff like that. Did any of the
nasty e Maale scare you really? Did they include threats? Oh? Yeah?
Did you did you report any of those letters? Yeah?
Peggy and Guy took it all in stride. The bad
with the good, and perhaps the most surprising moment of all,
(36:57):
a week after the wedding, they realized they were on
the cover of Time magazine. Time magazine was a big
deal back then. You're on the cover of it. Did
you know you were going to be on the covered floor?
So this hit news stands and you went, that's me
and my husband remembering The Godfather when they're walking down
(37:19):
the street and they see the headline if what's his name?
The men guy getting shot? Right? And they stopped and
go back and look like that. That was us with
that magazine. We had no idea and we're walking down
the street and all of a sudden, please see a
news stand? As you're kidding me? Can I just tell
(37:42):
you by the way I held my breath waiting for
which scene in The Godfather you were going to site?
Thank goodness, it wasn't the Horsehead. No, no, no. Did
you immediately buy a copy and read a copy? We
probably bought ten. They had captured the public's attention so
much so that when a major motion picture about interracial
(38:03):
marriage premiered a few months later, the film would get
an unexpected boost of publicity thanks to the extensive coverage
of Peggy and Guy's nuptials. As writer Mark Harris notes
in his book Pictures at a Revolution, the wedding quote
brought the subject of interracial marriage to the forefront of
the national conversation about race, or, as it was bluntly
(38:25):
put by New York Post critic Archer Winston, the Dean
Rusk family appears to have fronted for this very film.
God that film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with a
(38:47):
star studded cast of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role,
Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier, along with Hepburn's niece Katherine Houghton.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was the story of a white,
liberal San Francisco couple forced to confront their own prejudices
when their daughter comes home with the black man she
intends to marry. And it never occurred to me that
(39:09):
I might fall in love with a Negro. But I did.
And nothing in the world is going to change that.
Even if you had any objections, I wouldn't let him go. Now,
if you are the governor of Alabama. Guess Who's Coming
to Dinner was filmed before the Loving Versus Virginia decision
came down, hence some of the references that had already
fallen out of date. Have you thought what people would
(39:31):
say about you? Why in sixteen and seventeen states you
would be breaking the law, You'd be criminals, and say
they changed the law. That don't change the way people
feel about this thing. The movie ends with a stirring
speech by Spencer Tracy. It might seem a little hokey today,
but it's still a powerful moment, especially given it was
Tracy's last moment on screen. He would die just seventeen
(39:55):
days after filming. I'm sure you know what you're up against.
There will be a hundred million people right here in
this country will be shocked and offended and appalled at
the two of you, And the two of you will
just have to ride that out, maybe every day for
(40:16):
the rest of your lives. You can try to ignore
those people. Are you gonna feel sorry for them and
for their prejudices and their bigotry and their blind hatreds
and stupid fears. But we're necessary. You'll just have to
cling tight to each other and say, screw all those people,
(40:40):
Guess who's coming to dinner. It was a big hit
with audiences. In a little over a year, it was
on varieties list of all time box office winners in
the company have gone with the Wind and the Sound
of Music. The movie was an Awards darling as well,
getting nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and winning
(41:00):
a Major Acting Award coincidentally presented by Sydney Poitier. The
winner is Katherine Hepburn and guest Who's Brother. Which is
not to say everyone loved it. Life magazine's film critic
would call the movie an inescapably sentimental occasion. Another person
(41:21):
who wasn't a fan, Peggy Rusk, I saw the movie.
I didn't relate to it. I thought they made too
big a deal about the race. That wasn't how we
felt at all. That was actually kind of bored. There
(41:42):
are some great performances that I'm a When Guy was
deployed as a helicopter pilot to Vietnam after their wedding,
he and Peggy wrote to each other every single day,
even after his return. If he was away for a
few days, they would write each other. The letters are
heartfelt and tender. I love you with all my heart
(42:06):
and consider myself the happiest and luckiest girl in the world. So, Darling,
I guess that's why I don't fall apart when you
have to be away. It's because you are so much
a part of my soul that even when you are
three thousand miles away, I still feel like you are
within me. Take care of lover, and don't work too hard.
(42:29):
I love you very very much and can't wait to
be in your arms again. I love Peggy. Guy and
Peggy had a daughter, two grandchildren, and it seems a
very happy life. The couple had been married for nearly
forty five years when Guy died in at age sixty seven.
(42:51):
At the end, he was suffering from dementia. Then he
got to the point where he um really wouldn't recognize
or too much of anything. But I was the one
person he still recognized. He he never stopped recognizing. He
(43:15):
never stopped recognizing me. Was was he able to speak
a little bit? And his last words, because he died
at home in bed, I was holding him, and his
last conscious words were to apologize for leaving me alone.
(43:38):
So Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith became a part of
our cultural history because of what people saw of their
marriage from the outside. Two people with different skin colors.
But ultimately this was a love story, this story which
(44:01):
a lot of people would use the word hard to
describe what that must have been hard that part, you know,
it must have been difficult, and you're telling of it.
It was just so easy. It was easy. It doesn't
need to be hard, is that to love? You know?
(44:25):
If the love is there and if it's real, it's
all that matters, and it's really powerful, and people just
need to stop more in the mouths other stuff and
just it's been a lot more time loving. It's not
that hard and it's well worth it. A final note,
(44:49):
Peggy told me that if her wedding happened today, it
wouldn't be a big story at all, and she's probably right.
Remember earlier I mentioned that in the late fifties only
four percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage, as that
number had grown to I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary.
(45:17):
May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here. All
new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday wherever you get your
podcasts and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the
New York Times best selling book, now available in paperback
(45:40):
and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast.
This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Zoe Marcus and
Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez,
Cacceto and me Morocca. It was edited by Moral Walls
and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr.
(46:04):
Our production company is Neon Hum Media. Our archival producer
is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie
Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to
a Lilia Bundle's, Young Kim Mary Gardner, Mcgeehey, Zebulon Muletski
(46:28):
and Alberto Robina. Mobituary's senior producer is the Unconquerable Aaron
Shrank and Shrank. Executive producers for the series include Steve raiz,
He's and Morocca. Mobituaries was created by Yours Truly and
as always on dying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John
carp for helping breathe life into mobituaries,
Host
Mo Rocca
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