A modern Cinderella must defend her fairy-tale marriage in a scandal that rocked jazz-age America. Upon marrying Leonard Rhinelander in 1924, Alice Jones, a former nanny, became the first black woman to be listed in the Social Register as a member of one of New York’s wealthiest families. When their marriage became a national scandal, Alice and Leonard found themselves thrust into the glare of public scrutiny–and into a Westchester courtroom. Earl Lewis and Heidi A… More >>
Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White
I came across a review of this book when scanning a genealogical magazine. The author of the review stated that this work of non-fiction reads much like fiction, and I concur. Most of the book is well-written and engaging, though it leaves the contemporary reader scratching his head in wonderment that these events happened less than a century ago. Ultimately, there are no heroes in this book, however. It still seems incredible to me that there was virtually no discussion of race or ancestry, either within the Jones family or with Kip Rhinelander. Rhinelander really comes off as quite the cad. He appears to have genuinely loved Alice Jones (as she did in return), but he was so spineless in being “forced” into pursuing an annulment of his marriage. It is also sad that Alice never remarried or had children. Both her life and Rhinelander’s appear to have been largely wasted. That is the real tragedy of the tale.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book is an excellent historical account of the Rhinelander case. I was not even aware of this case but this book brought it to life for me! It was an extremely interesting historical lesson. The authors’ account of the trial was very well done.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book was recommended by my Dean, so of course I had to read it. The issues raised in this book are very thought provoking. What does it mean to be Black in America? Who is Black? Does the media influence or reflect the views of society? I enjoyed this book although the writing was at time sensationalized. Most of the information comes from newspaper archives which the writers then interpret, so we never really hear from Rhinelander or Alice in their own words. It was interesting that people in the North felt they were less racist than the South, yet they continued to provide coverage of the case along the same racial lines. Goes to show, same racism, new face. Overall, this book wasn’t bad.
Rating: 3 / 5
I’m glad to see ongoing interest in this book (which is available in paperback now.) I’m even happier to see ongoing discussion of the issues it raises. That was one of the reasons we wrote the book. I’d just like to briefly correct a few misreadings in A.D. Powell’s review. I am certainly not a proponent of one-drop racialism. While it is true that for much of American history, both blacks and whites assumed people of mixed ancestry to have more in common with their black peers than their white, much of my work actually highlights situations where this was not the case. People might certainly have black ancestry they are unaware of, but in the present context I don’t advocate that they must identify themselves as black. However, in the 1920s, in some states, if a seeming white person were to be discovered to have a black grandparent or even great grandparent, that person’s legal status would shift to black. Virginia was particularly well known for pursuing family trees and make such changes, although they allowed for some Native ancestry in a legally white person. One drop racialism was one of the primary ways white Americans defined race at the turn of the century. It was never the only way, and it was a system full of illogic and contradictions, which we state several times in the book. In fact we talk extensively about the ambiguity of Alice’s identity and ancestry, and how that ambiguity challenged American efforts to eliminate an intermediary category between blacks and whites. It is that ambiguity that made the story compelling to us as historians and writers. We don’t really know what her father’s ethnicity was, and we say so quite clearly. But we do analyze the trial and the news coverage of it primarily in the context of "black and white" as the title suggests. This is because, while Alice and her family never identified themselves as black, the newspaper editors, journalists, and commentators who spun the story for public consumption routinely did. That is, Alice was treated in the press and (we argue) in the courtroom as if she were black.
Elsewhere Ms. Powell has suggested that I should be careful lest my own Italian ancestry lead me to be labelled a mulatto myself. I’m not sure why that would be something I should fear. In the book we discuss the racial ambiguity of the new immigrants, including Italians, Asians, Indians (who are determined to be Caucasian but not white by the Supreme Court in 1924 which may have impacted Alice’s legal strategy), Southern Europeans, Slavs, and Mexicans. The mutability, inconsistency, and ambiguity of race in the 20th century reveals race to be essentially a political and cultural system, not one based in biology or logic.
btw: Target’s website wouldn’t let me post this without entering a rating so I went for 3 stars to try not to affect the overall rating. If there is a person editting this, I’d prefer not to be rating my own book–that just seems wrong!
Rating: 3 / 5
Hmm, I don’t know if everyone reads the book carefully, but very clearly, one of the main arguments of this book is how american culture tried to portray something ambiguous (race) as something precise and scientific, and was caught in its own lie.
The book is human and interesting, but it lets that human interest come from the story. Many books of this nature are ruined by authors who want to make more of a novel, injecting dialogues and thoughts that the author has invented to flesh out the facts as they are known. We don’t know exactly what the young couple were thinking or how their feelings might have changed over time, but the author doesn’t pretend to know, either, and that makes the events more compelling and the book more truthful.
I like this book because it has been written with a soft touch, presenting facts, and allowing them to make the story.
We are not given a romantic, overdone cartoon of the case, but merely invited to see how absurd a love affair is when it is divorced from its personal nature, and how equally absurd the scientific classification of “race” is when it cannot even be measured with scientific precision.
Rating: 5 / 5