Although mulattos were living symbols of the violation of the caste
system, unions between blacks and whites in Natchez [Mississippi] still
existed. [Some talk] about the commonality of common law marriages, or
“permanent alliances,” in 1930s Natchez. Charlotte Mackel
Harrison’s husband, Robert, grew up knowing a white Jewish
grandfather, Charles Moritz. Harrison’s grandmother Dorcas Walker
had two daughters[,Julie and Lucille,] with Moritz, who took an active
role in raising the girls. … Under Mississippi state law[,]
Moritz could not marry Harrison’s grandmother. If the two had
chosen to cohabit, which they did not, the social mores of Natchez
society would have tolerated such an arrangement, even though many
residents – black and white – would have objected.
… Walker and Moritz never married anyone else, and fittingly[,]
they died in the same year.
I wonder if Dorcas Walker and Charles Moritz ever contemplated, or dreamed,
of the world that now exists in the aftermath of Loving.
This is a world where their grandson, who was considered black, would be
allowed to marry, and would marry, not one, but two white women prior to his
death; where three of their six great-grandchildren are currently in
interracial marriages, as is one of their four great-great-grandchildren.
Would they approve and cheer, be happy that their descendents are now able
to marry people of any race? Or would they, despite their own actions,
deride and decry the miscegenation that runs rampant in their family? Did
they have conversations about how to raise their mixed-race children in the
increasingly segregated South? Or was that a non-issue because their
children resided with their mother and were considered culturally, socially,
and legally to be black and identified as such? As their
great-great-granddaughter, who self-identifies – and is
phenotypically, culturally, and socially identified – as black, but
is in an interracial relationship, raising a multiracial daughter, I wish I
could ask them these questions.