
Tangled Fortunes
Kathryn Schumaker
(Author)Description
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.
Product Details
Publisher | Basic Books |
Publish Date | January 28, 2025 |
Pages | 336 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781541605312 |
Dimensions | 9.3 X 6.3 X 1.5 inches | 1.2 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"A creative, insightful, thoroughly researched history. Told through the gripping stories of countless couples fighting to preserve their unions, Schumaker shows how their resistance led to a surprising level of toleration for interracial cohabitation, while also documenting its limits in stark terms. Not only did authorities repeatedly criminalize those relationships and penalize some couples severely, the white men who governed the segregated South protected their own wealth and diminished that of African Americans by relentlessly denying the inheritance claims of Black members of interracial families. Through Schumaker's deft narratives, interracial marriage becomes a way to understand anew the intersection of individual experience and the social order."--Michael Grossberg, professor emeritus, Indiana University
"This deeply researched, beautifully written book uncovers a forgotten history that changes how we see the Jim Crow South. As Schumaker shows, legal efforts to police the color line did not eliminate interracial marriage. Following the compelling stories of those couples and their efforts to keep their families together, this book reveals the possibilities of human agency and the limits of formal law in dictating the terms of everyday life. This is a must read."--Laura F. Edwards, Princeton University
"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
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