THE LEGAL SYSTEM OF SLAVERY in the United States, which treated black people as property and therefore allowed children and parents to be separated, bought, and sold—ended in 1865 after the North won the Civil War and Congress ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Yet many in the South refused to give up the economic caste system that greatly benefited whites, although at first southerners had little choice, as the federal government was administering the states of the former Confederacy. During that period, known as Reconstruction, “the newly freed men . . . could vote, marry, or go to school . . . and the more ambitious among them could enroll in black colleges . . . open businesses, and run for office under the protection of northern troops. . . . Some managed to become physicians, legislators, undertakers, insurance men. They assumed that the question of black citizens’ rights had been settled for good and that all that confronted them was merely building on these new opportunities” (Wilkerson, 2010, p. 37).
But within ten years the federal government had given up on Reconstruction. As the writer Nicholas Lemann (2013) details:
The Army was in the South to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteen Amendments [civil rights and voting rights, respectively], and it became increasingly clear that without its presence, the white South would regionally nullify those amendments through terrorism. But the use of federal troops to confront the white militias was deeply unpopular, including in the North. . . . The country had never been entirely for full rights for African Americans in the first place, and it wanted to put the Civil War and its legacy behind it.
The Ku Klux Klan, which began in the immediate aftermath of the war and was suppressed by federal troops, soon morphed into an archipelago of secret organizations all over the South that were more explicitly devoted to political terror. . . . In the aggregate, many more black Americans died from white terrorist activities during Reconstruction than from many decades of lynchings. Their effect was to nullify, through violence, the Fifteenth Amendment, by turning black political activity and voting into something that required taking one’s life into one’s hands.
Isabel Wilkerson picks up the story: “Around the turn of the twentieth century . . . southern state legislatures began devising with inventiveness and precision laws that would regulate every aspect of black people’s lives, solidify the southern caste system, and prohibit even the most casual and incidental contact between the races. They would come to be called Jim Crow laws” (2010, p. 40). The Jim Crow era lasted almost one hundred years.1 By 1915 all southern states had some form of Jim Crow laws. For example, blacks were prohibited from eating in the same restaurants, drinking out of the same drinking fountains, entering the same restrooms, going to the same schools, or watching movies in the same theaters as whites. Common signage at the time warned: “Whites Only”; “Restrooms for Colored”; “No Dogs, Negroes or Mexicans”; “Colored Waiting Room”; and “Staff and Negroes Use Back Entrance” (Householder, 2012).
Punishment for blacks who defied Jim Crow laws (and even for sympathetic whites) was severe. For infractions like attempting to register to vote, stealing a cow, talking back to a white person, or fighting for justice, blacks could be lynched by white mobs that didn’t even bother to hold a sham trial (NAACP, 2000). And in the case of serious felonies, many innocent people were hanged.
Compounding the strictures of the Jim Crow laws were the unwritten and rigid social expectations during this period. For example, a black man was strongly discouraged from shaking hands with a white man—and from making eye contact with a white woman, lest he be accused of making sexual advances. Blacks were expected to address whites as “Mister,” “Sir,” or “Ma’am,” yet whites more often than not spoke condescendingly to blacks. Such unwritten rules further reinforced the unequal relationship between blacks and whites. Black people were ever mindful of the need to not break a Jim Crow law, give the appearance of breaking a law, written or unwritten, or “cause” a white person to feel any discomfort for any unfathomable reason.
It wasn’t until 1954 that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, overturned separate-but-equal laws and declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. By extension this ruling made segregation in other public facilities illegal. Subsequent decisions struck down similar kinds of Jim Crow legislation (Reid-Merritt, 2010).
During the Jim Crow era the idea that white American families might adopt black and biracial children would have been incomprehensible both socially and legally, especially in the South but in the North as well. After the end of World War II in 1945, some white American families intentionally set out to make their families interracial by adopting Asian children from Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and later through the Indian Adoption Project (Herman, 2012). As Ellen Herman (2012) notes, “Attitudes toward these transracial placements reproduced the historical color line in the United States. . . . White parents were more likely to accept ‘yellow,’ ‘red,’ or even ‘brown’ children. Those who took in ‘black’ children were considered the most transgressive.”
The first interracial, or transracial, adoption on record involving an African American child placed in a white home occurred in Minnesota in 1948. Shortly thereafter campaigns to promote adoptions of African American children motivated other white couples to inquire about transracial adoption (Herman, 2012). Black adoptive families were in short supply because white social workers tended to regard them as “weak, ineffective, and culturally deficient” and therefore did not view “homes of color as the kinds of stable, healthy environments ideal for raising a child.” But as the civil rights movement progressed, it helped to turn “national concern to the injustices suffered by black Americans. Child welfare professionals began to express concern with the disproportionate numbers of black children growing up in foster care” (Logan, 1996, 5, 7). A few agencies began cautiously placing mixed-race and African American children in white homes. Some of these families became targets of violence and harassment (Herman, 2012). Although only a few white couples adopted African American children at first, these adoptions began to define the debate on transracial adoption that continues today.
IN THIS SECTION three fascinating individuals discuss their lives during the latter part of the Jim Crow era. All three were born and raised in the South and have a tireless focus and determination that helped them to rise above the systematic racial, political, and socioeconomic disenfranchisement of black Americans. They fought to overcome racial segregation and discrimination in their own worlds in order to forge paths of economic, political, educational, and social opportunities for others. Their journeys were far from easy. But all three had parents and guardians who taught them to dig deep, carry themselves with a healthy sense of self-respect, and exemplify in their daily lives the values of hard work, education, perseverance, compassion for others, faith in God, and love of country. The skills and experiences they gained during their upbringing guided them into their adult years and influence their thoughts about transracial adoption and their hopes for children and families.
Evelyn Rhodes was born in 1920 in Memphis, Tennessee. She is a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Rhodes, a writer of poetry and short stories, is also a decades-long member of the Detroit Black Writers Guild. I sat down with Rhodes in her East Lansing living room for our discussion. I was interested in learning how she viewed herself while she was growing up, particularly since she was raised in a period when society devalued black families, especially black girls and women. I was especially curious about what values sustained her and her family through the civil rights era and into the present day. I wondered whether the racial cruelty of the era in which she grew up had made her bitter toward white people and whether it had adversely affected her intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth.
W. Wilson Goode Sr. was born in 1938 in North Carolina. He was the son of a sharecropper, yet he rose to become the first black mayor of Philadelphia. In childhood he endured the dire economic realities resulting from the Jim Crow laws and witnessed the vulnerability of his own family. As a teenager his family migrated north to Philadelphia for better opportunities, but he soon discovered similar disenfranchisement in Philadelphia. Given these circumstances, I wanted to know how Goode found his inner strength and established a support network in such difficult circumstances. What gave him the audacity to believe that he could achieve academic success and lead a city? Goode’s voice is crucial to the discussion of transracial adoption because he has also invested in the lives of transracial adoptees and interacted with white adoptive parents.
The final interviewee in this section, Cyril C. Pinder, was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1946. His story vividly reveals what it was like to be black during a time when society could legally and overtly undervalue a person’s talent, wit, social acceptance, and even character solely because of the color of his skin. I think Pinder’s frank discussion of racism is important because one of the most traumatic experiences for many black transracial adoptees occurs when they leave their white adoptive homes, with all the attendant privileges, and confront the burden of race and discrimination in this country. Pinder’s honest conversation will help adoptees understand why it is vital to know who you are. It is also important to note that Pinder has known a few transracial adoptees, most of whom led tormented lives because of their confused racial identity.