Overview

This title provides transcripts that offer new insights on the infamous trial. In 1925 Leonard Rhinelander, the youngest son of a wealthy New York society family, sued to end his marriage to Alice Jones, a former domestic servant and the daughter of a 'colored' cabman. After being married only one month, Rhinelander pressed for the dissolution of his marriage on the grounds that his wife had lied to him about her racial background. The subsequent marital annulment trial became a massive public spectacle, not only in New York but across the nation - despite the fact that the state had never outlawed interracial marriage.Elizabeth Smith-Pryor makes extensive use of trial transcripts, in addition to contemporary newspaper coverage and archival sources, to explore why Leonard Rhinelander was allowed his day in court. She moves fluidly between legal history, a day-by-day narrative of the trial itself, and analyses of the trial's place in the culture of the 1920s North to show how notions of race, property, and the law were - and are - inextricably intertwined.

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9780807832684

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Reviews

Offers other fascinating discussions of the ways in which shifting notions of middle-class manhood, courtship practices, and acceptable sexual behavior, affected the course of the trial. . . . An illuminating and engaging read that is particularly suitab

Offers a fascinating thesis of why so many white Americans in the 1920s had become anxious about the concept of passing. <br>- Flavour Magazine

Author Information

ELIZABETH SMITH-PRYOR is assistant professor of history at Kent State University. She practiced law in New York for six years.

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