Today, many people have no idea what life was like for a black person in Europe or America seventy years ago. Such an organisation in the United States as the Ku Klux Klan has been forgotten by middle-aged people, not to mention young people.
Back then, the division into ‘white’ and ‘black’ was everywhere. Separate schools, restaurants, movie theatres, parks, public transport. It was in such a difficult time of racial discrimination that a white girl decided to marry a dark-skinned guy. How it all ended, and how their future life turned out, I want to tell you in today’s story.
In the 1950s, racial discrimination was rampant in Europe and the United States
During World War II, Jake Jacobson was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was a citizen of the island nation of Trinidad, which was part of the U.S. Army’s military coalition. The training regiment in which Jake served was stationed in the north-west of England in the county of Lancashire.
Jake learnt the military profession of a signalman at the local technical college, which trained such specialists during the war. There was also trained as a stenographer and a girl named Mary.
It was here that these young people met. It turned out that Jake knew how to court very nicely, unlike the local guys. He read Shakespeare by heart and composed poems for Mary himself. There’s an expression – ‘War makes everyone equal’, but it doesn’t work on the home front.
Jake and Mary
In May 1945, to mark the end of the war, the communications cadets invited the girls to a picnic. That evening Mary had her first kiss. She and Jake moved away from their company and enjoyed some amorous solitude.
At that time, Mary’s neighbour passed by the kissing couple on a bicycle. And when the girl returned home, her father interrogated her about her behaviour. ‘You disgrace not only yourself, but our whole family’ – he shouted at the whole house.
After that, he forbade his daughter to attend a shorthand course. He thought he had thus separated the couple in love. But as Shakespeare said, ‘Love is nothing if it has its measure.’ And these two had no measure.
Jake and Mary
They started seeing each other in secret. But there was a hitch. The U.S. training regiment, due to the end of the war, was quickly scrapped and moved home to Texas. But not even the ocean could separate these lovers. Having served the required term and demobilised in the late forties, Jake returned to England.
This is where the biggest trials of their lives began. As I said, there was a huge interracial divide in society at that time. So when Jake knocked on Mary’s door, her furious father came running out, hunting rifle in hand: ‘Get out of here, or I’ll put both rounds of buckshot in you.’
Unhappy Jake walked away from his beloved’s house, wiping his tears with his fist. But what could he do? Suddenly he heard a shout behind him: ‘Wait, my love!’
Yes, it was his Mary. When she heard her father screaming, she ran out into the corridor and saw Jake walking away. She pushed her father away and ran after him. You think this was a happy ending? Not at all, it was the beginning of the Jacobson family’s thorny journey.
Mary
The neighbours who saw the picture immediately condemned the poor girl, and her father made a condition. ‘If that man ever comes near our house again, you will never cross its threshold again.’
But even such a harsh ultimatum did not stop Mary. The next morning she left the house with one suitcase and never came back here again.
No municipality wanted to register such an interracial marriage. It was only on the outskirts of Birmingham that a woman was found who agreed to it. Her son had been saved from death by a dark-skinned soldier.
But was it a happy marriage? After all, none of their relatives and friends came to their holiday. And further it became even more difficult, no tenant did not want to rent them a flat. Soon they had no money left to stay in a hotel. For almost a week they lived in a homeless shelter.
Jake and Mary
And then Mary was lucky, she was accepted as a primary school teacher with an office flat. Mary had to hide the fact that her husband was black. To do so, she chose a flat on the other side of town. The school authorities did not object, because no one wanted to live so far away from the school.
The main condition for Mary was not to be late for lessons, but after the shelter, the girl got up even an hour earlier. Of course, the neighbours were dissatisfied with the new tenants, but the flats were state-owned, so no one asked them. That’s how the Jacobson family set sail on their seventieth birthday.