Our love was colour blind… but our families weren’tPosted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2016-04-21 00:15Z by Steven |
Our love was colour blind… but our families weren’t
The Daily Mail
London, United Kingdom
2016-02-05
Diana Appleyard and Clare Goldwin
Deeply moving, and exposing tensions that still blight Britain today, mixed-race couples from four generations tell their stories
‘MY FATHER THREW ME OUT OF THE HOUSE’: 1940s MARY AND JAKE JACOBS
Mary, 81, is married to Jake, 86, and lives in Solihull in the West Midlands. They have no children. Mary is a former deputy head teacher, and Jake worked for the post office before retiring. Mary is white and Jake is black, originally from Trinidad.
MARY SAYS: When I told my father I was going to marry Jake he said, ‘If you marry that man you will never set foot in this house again.’
He was horrified that I could contemplate marrying a black man, and I soon learned that most people felt the same way. The first years of our marriage living in Birmingham were hell — I cried every day, and barely ate. No one would speak to us, we couldn’t find anywhere to live because no one would rent to a black man, and we had no money. …
Read the entire article here.