Love Was My Parents’ Answer to Jim Crow

In my house in Providence, there’s an old photograph of my parents hanging on the living room wall that I look at every day. They had been married for 11 years when it was taken. In the picture, they’re sitting next to each other in the backyard on a late summer’s afternoon. They are smiling and holding hands. To all the world, they look like they have arrived—like they have everything they’ve ever wanted.

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But it’s 1957, and in America, Black people...