Mr. & Mrs. Smith: Death of a Marriage Ban

And newlyweds Margaret Rusk and Guy Smith. Okay, I'm pretty sure you don't recognize those names. Margaret, better known as Peggy, was the daughter of then Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Guy Smith, her longtime love. So why were they on the September seven cover of Time? For the simple reason that Peggy was white and Guy was black. The headline

reads Mr. And Mrs Guy Smith an interracial marriage. Margaret Elizabeth Rusk, only daughter of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, becomes the wife of Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Guy Gibson Smith, a Negro. Nineteen sixty seven, it turned out was a very big year for interracial marriage. In all the field of race relations, probably nothing is more sensitive than the issue of inter marriage. That June, in the landmark ruling of Loving versus Virginia, the Supreme Court struck down state

laws banning it in the United States. Mildred and Richard Loving had actually gone to jail after getting married. We were in it because we got married, We loved each other and gotten married. The Court's decision was unanimous, but only a fifth of Americans actually approved of interracial marriage, an attitude that Hollywood was about to address with a major motion picture. Three Academy Award winners and a bright young newcomer combine their talents in a love story of today.

In December, the movie Guests Who's Coming to Dinner starred Sydney Pottier as a black doctor planning to marry a white woman and delivering the news to his future in laws played by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy Mrs Drayton. I'm medically qualified, so I hope you wouldn't think it presumptous. If I say you want to sit down before you fall down, he thinks she's going to faint because he's a Negro. Well I don't think I'm going to fade in the middle of all of this, a very private

couple thrust into the spotlight. Ms. Rusk and Mr Smith had obviously thought long and hard about the consequences of a mixed marriage, but Peggy Rusk Smith says she and her husband had only one focus as they walked down the aisle. We didn't get married for any reason. In the fact that we left it to other. We weren't trying to prove anything, change anything. Sorry to mean some more in the truth of it. But the story of

her and her late husband is anything but boring. It involves romance in turbulent times, presidents, movie stars, and horses. We'll hear that story and along the way, look back at the surprising history of interracial relationships in the United States. From CBS Sunday Morning and I Heart I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries, this moment Mr and Mrs Smith and the year that changed marriage in America. You know, I'll

tell you a funny story about the dress. I've had it cleaned and boxed and sealed, so it's still in good shape from when I first and I wore it. So I thought, well, maybe I should give it to a thrift shop. And well, whoever I was speaking to, said, why don't you see if the Smithsonian wants it? And I said, oh, please, But to make them happy, I called him into my shock. The Smithsonian does want it, Peggy. Of course they wanted. This was a big deal. I'm

going to give it to you straight. Peggy Rusk is not the type of person I'm used to interviewing. She's the opposite of a hype artist. But don't be fooled. Her story was remarkable for its time. So let's go back to when Peggy was eleven and her father became Secretary of State under President John F. Kennedy. Why did he accept the job because he was asked. The President asked him, and he believed, if the President asked you to do something, you do it to serve your country. Yes,

he didn't want to, but he was asked. The Rusk family quickly transitioned from a quiet life in Scarsdale, New York, to a busy life of politics and diplomacy in Washington, d C. As the daughter of America's top diplomat. Peggy accompanied her mother to receptions at various embassies. So I got used to seeing people from all of the world, all different nationalities and ethnicities and different language, different dress, difference with normal To me, it was an exciting but

also kind of a lonely time. My parents were gone all the time. It was very rare for them to be home. She threw herself into one of her early loves, horseback riding at Washington's Rock Creek Park, and it was there, at age fourteen, that she found another love, Guy Smith, a writing instructor at the Stables. Guy had grown up in Washington, the only child of an analyst working at the Pentagon and a teacher. And what was it about him? Just from his appearance that immediately made you go, WHOA,

He's cute, what can I say? And very sweet, a gentleman and friendly open A few years older, five years older, five years older. The age difference didn't seem to face Peggy. She emphasizes that their relationship began very much as a friendship. In fact, she saw a number of similarities between Guy's family and her own, as mother and father were wonderful, wonderful people, very smart, um well educated. Their house was full of books and full of classical music. My father

and Guy's father were like book heads. Guy's parents had sent him to the progressive Georgetown Day School, integrated at its founding in when d c's public schools were still segregated. Guy would go on to attend Georgetown University. But Peggy also acknowledges how race made their experiences very different. Guy had to travel a good distance from his predominantly black neighborhood of Ladroit Park just to get to the stables

each day. It's it's sad because as our home in Spring Valley was appreciating, their home where they lived on the other sided, city was depreciating, and they couldn't just live anywhere. They couldn't buy anywhere, and then probably places wouldn't rent to them. To another difference between the two where they stood politically well. Guy was a conservative, he voted for gold Water. Guy was a conservative Republican right

and I was a liberal Democrat. But back then politics did not color your life the way for some people now. Things would eventually progress between the two. At where Else a horse show, the show had a pair's event where two writers would compete together, and Guy had come at the show grants and asked me if I would pair with him, Yeah, that must have been exciting. It was exciting.

I was like, yes, sure, But when guy suddenly had to pair with another girl in the competition, Peggy was crushed and I left the show grants and started writing, this is really a young mind at work. I was going to ride until he got dark. Have them all worried about what happened, especially him, worry about what had happened to me. Yes, you know, so this is just my payback. You would go missing, I would go missing, yes,

and he would feel guilty. Yes, exactly. It was a great plan, but unfortunately nobody seemed to realize Peggy was missing. So I decided, okay, it's time to go back to the barn. Right. It was totally dark, but no one was there. I thought, what, they've all come home and not even noticed that I wasn't back. They were a horse and they all left, and nobody gives um. You know what. I took the horse down, put him in the stall, and was brushing him with the tears rolling

down my face. I can see it, yes, feeling completely unloved by every soul. When who should appear? So I'm in the corner stall and I hear footsteps down, coming down the cement alway, and you know I'm going to like this, trying to clean my face, wiping your tears. I see that you've been crying, right, And he gets to the edge of the and he said, would you like a ride home? Sure? You know this suddenly has

gotten great? Yes? Really great? Even better. On the way home, he invited me to go to the or showed dinner banquet with him. Did you recognize that he was asking as he was asking you on a date. Yes, well, to go to the banquet, okay, yes, But before the two would set out on their date, Guy felt it was important to get permission from Peggy's mother. Was it just that he was very formal? I think he was

very polite and well raised. But I also think he might have been smart enough to realize that if he showed himself in person to my mother, if there was an issue with the race, she could just say no, she can't go, and the race is she wouldn't come up this way. There would be no surprises. Your mother would know that she was saying, asked to you going to a banquet with a black man. I thought it

was brilliant in retrospect. Now, remember It's ninety three, the year before the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. When former President Harry Truman, the man who had signed the executive Order integrating the armed forces, was asked by reporters about his thoughts and intermarriage, he replied that he didn't believe in it, so it wouldn't have been shocking if Peggy's parents took issue with her daughter dating an African American. Was Guy's race ever discussed by you and

your parents? It must have been at some point. Never. Peggy's parents, she says, were different, particularly her dad, which is kind of surprising. Dean Rusk was a sub learned Democrat from Cherokee County, Georgia, the grandson of Confederate soldiers. As a young boy, he delivered groceries to white families and the black families who lived literally on the other side of the tracks. When he would deliver to their black families, um, everybody would be sitting outside on the

steps because it was hot, and Pop said. He would sit on the steps and listen to them talk and realized that what they said was completely different than what black people would say when they were around white people. Looking back, russ would remember that he quote heard their anger and learned of their hopes, and even at age eight, quote, I could sense the unfairness of it all. As he grew up, he quietly took a stand against racial intolerance.

In two while serving in the War Department's Military Intelligence off us, he was meeting with Ralph Bunch, a young analyst who would go on to become a civil rights leader, a diplomat, and the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It was lunchtime and Pap said, let's go the captain he gets lunch and Mr. Bunch said, Dan, you know I can't go eat there. And Pap said, oh, yeah, we'll see about that. It just went and from that

day on it's disagregated. Now, as Secretary of State, Dean Rusk's unwavering support of American involvement in Vietnam is a permanent part of his legacy. It's in the first line of his New York Times, Oh Bit, Rusk was on the wrong side of history on Vietnam, But what's been forgotten is his equally unstinting support of civil rights. It wasn't just a moral issue for him, It was also a foreign policy concern. He believed legalized segregation would keep

the US from winning the Cold War. And this was the time when the African nations were being built, and so there are a lot of new African diplomats in Washington, But the capital of the Free World welcomed these dignitaries with less than open arms. In the early nineteen sixties, d C remained largely segregated, if not legally, then in practice. Black diplomats were living and working there, yet often unable to find housing or be served in many restaurants. Again,

these were diplomats. A Washington Post article from the time notes that d C was becoming a hardship post for these emissaries. The situation outside the city limits was even worse for diplomats traveling by car between the nation's capital and the United Nations in New York City. The only route was a on US Highway forty, which passed for a stretch through Maryland, a state where businesses were still legally permitted to segregate customers or even refused to serve.

African diplomats found themselves ejected from restaurants or unable to use the bathroom. In nineteen sixty one, the ambassador from the newly formed country of Chad was refused service as he tried to get a cup of coffee in a Maryland diner. The Governor of Maryland apologized after the White House and Attorney General Robert Kennedy interceded on a personal note. I find this little known chapter of history particularly disturbing.

I grew up in the nineteen seventies in the Maryland suburbs outside d C. The sauntering drive down Massachusetts Avenue, also known as Embassy Row towards downtown is something I remember, fondly passing one ornate embassy after another, ring to memorize the flags outside each one. The people who worked there were their country's representatives to America. I had no idea of what black African diplomats were subjected to. Only a

decade earlier. The troubling and embarrassing situation was summed up in a powerful speech given by former CBS news anchor Edward R. Murrow back in May of n Murrow had recently become Director of the United States Information Agency, and he delivered a stark warning. It is not only that these people are humans like the rest of us, but that they are leaders of the nations whose friendship this

land deems vital. We would have them join our company of honorable men and defending against him, Coachman, our dedication to dignity and freedom, but it is a dignity to which we were not fully admit them. And in a nod cold war tensions, Murrow noted, and let us remember this is not something that communists did to us. We do it ourselves in our own capital. Is it possible that we concern ourselves too much with outer space and fireplaces and too little with inner space and nearer places.

Rusk and the State Department knew that these discriminatory actions were damaging America's reputation overseas. It was a huge problem for him a Secretary State. I just think it showed the United States to behavo critical and not willing to live up to its own constitution. In Pilla, France, throwing his support behind the proposed Civil Rights Act, Dean Rusk testified in a Senate hearing in July of nine three,

sparring with South Carolina Senator Strong Thermond. Do you favor the demonstrations that have been held and would you favor demonstrations in the future. If the civil rights builders not pays various types of demonstration, I would not wish to make a blanket statement about all those that I have known about what I would say this, sir, if I were denied what our Nego citizens denied, I would demonstrate. Meanwhile,

his daughter's boyfriend was experiencing discrimination firsthand. We were stopped at times by the police in d C. In d C and they would make God get out, make us both get out, and they would take forever searching the car, looking for a reason to arrest him or define him, or do whatever. And I could see Guy being having to hold his temper. And it was an uncomfortable time. Were you ever tempted to say I'm the daughter of

the Secretary of State? Because that would have been I kept my mouth set, okay um, But it was not comfortable. It made guy angry, was it? He? Was it humiliating? I know it made him angry because I could see it in his eyes. I don't know if humiliating the right word. I think people of color back then, when they were unjustly treated, we're more angry than humiliated in spite of the issues they faced. Peggy also acknowledges the guy's physical appearance was likely a factor in some people

being more accepting of the relationship. I'm sure that it made it easier in ways that he was light skinned. After dating for several years, Peggy and Guy decided they wanted to get hitched. It was Christmas of nineteen sixty six when Peggy, home from her freshman year at Stanford, told her parents she would be getting married the following year. He was going to be going off to Vietnam and I would be eighteen, and um, we didn't ask for my parents permission. We just said we're going to get

married in September, just like that. But they had no idea how big a deal this wedding would be, or that nineteen seven would prove to be a game changing year for interracial marriage. After all, an awful lot of people are going to think that we were a very shocking pair, Isn't that right? Mrs Straight I know what you mean. I get that history doesn't move in a straight line, but the history of interracial relationships in this country really moves in zigs and zags. With a number

of famous and not so famous names. We're going to get to Peggy and Guy's wedding day in a bit, but I wanted to go back further in time to really explore how we got to. Is this a story that begins and ends in Virginia. Yeah, absolutely it does. That's Cheryl cash And she's a Georgetown University law professor and the author of Loving Interracial Intimacy and the Threat to White Supremacy. She says interracial relationships began in the

earliest years of the Virginia Colony. At the time, she writes, there were legal unions between white people and black people like Tony Longo. Tony long Ago was a very skilled cattleman when he arrived as a kidnapped en slave person. By sixtifty two, he owned two acres of land in the colony. In the Jamestown Colony, cash And says some enslaved black people were able to hire themselves out and

buy their freedom for a time. They were then able to vote, bear arms, and marry, which is what Tony Longo eventually did, marrying a white englishwoman after obtaining his freedom, And he wasn't the only one. There was no prohibition against interracial marriage at that time. Were they living their lives fairly openly. Do we know, Yes, it was not illegal. So this marriage, which was legally sanctioned, underscores that at least among the working class people, there wasn't this strict separation.

And you know, there was actually a lot of interracial cooperation, particularly around resistance to masters. Fearful of free black people and white indentured servants coming together and rebelling, new laws were created to enforce separation, denying black people first the right to bear arms, then the right to vote. By interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia. Other colonies and eventually

states would enact similar laws. Still, interracial relationships were happening. Okay, quick note, I'm using the word relationship to describe how two individuals related to each other, not to imply consent. You probably know the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, which by most accounts was non consensual. After all, she was enslaved by Jefferson at Monticello. But Cheryl cash In writes about a relationship between another slaveholding white politician and

a black woman that she describes differently. I consider myself a presidential history buff, but clearly I need to bone up on my vice presidential history, because I had no idea that Martin Van Buren's vice president, Richard Mentor Johnson, had an interracial relationship that you described as sort of

a common law marriage. Richard Mentor Johnson actually was one of the best known politicians of his era, and Johnson became the center of national attention during the election of eighteen thirty six when the public became aware of his common law marriage with Julia Chen, a mixed race woman. Enslaved by his family, Johnson, from Kentucky had two daughters with Chen and publicly recognized them as his own. The daughters lived their lives as free women, both marrying white men.

People were scandalous. What was shocking was that he was bringing this out into the open and trying to have it legitimated because he genuinely loved this woman. Johnson defended his marriage as quote, under the eyes of God. While he was serving in Congress, Julia Chinn died. What really scandalized people about this man is that he continued to take up with black women he enslaved. I guess he had a thing about that. Southern newspapers denounced Richard Mentor

Johnson as the great amalgamationist. As far as I can tell, um, the relationship with Julia chen was was a benevolent, voluntary relationship, but his subsequent sex with other black women, as far as I could tell, was rape. So I would use rapist at least for these subsequent relationships. Fast forward to the post Civil War North and a figure who still looms large today, the great right or abolitionist Frederick Douglas. I had no idea that he had married a white woman.

Never knew this, Really, you didn't know this. Douglas, the child of a black mother and white father, was married for over forty years to Anna Murray Douglas, a free black woman, But in eighteen eighty four, a year and a half after Anna's death, he married a white suffragist named Helen Pitts in Philadelphia, where interracial marriage was legal. Frederick Douglas emancipated himself not only from slavery, but from

the social constrictions of race. He was the center of a bi racial abolitionist movement that gave some opportunity to actually meet someone on equal terms and equal intellectual terms. Douglas's marriage caused an uproar, and not just among white people, ball. A black Washington, d c. Newspaper called it a national calamity.

Black reformer and intellectual book or T. Washington wrote his own race especially condemned him, and the notion seemed to be quite general that he had made the most serious mistake of his life. Well, this is what happens. You know, You've been centuries teaching people to stay within lines and having rules that fortify a color line. It colors the

practices of people on both sides of the line. In a letter to a friend, Douglas defended his marriage, asking what business has the world with the color of my wife? So ahead of his time? You know, just to say, I am going to do what my heart tells me to do, and I'm going to exercise every discretion that freedom springs, including who I decided to marry in love. While Frederick Douglas was able to marry someone of a different race in the late eighteen hundreds, that was certainly

not the case everywhere. The post Civil War era of reconstruction had seen the end of some interracial marriage bands, but in most cases only briefly. The doors would close again towards the end of the nineteenth century, as Jim Crow laws went into effect in the South. In nineteen fifteen, D W. Griffith's landmark and deeply racist film The Birth

of a Nation was released. In one of its more infamous scenes, an actor in blackface menaces a Southern white woman who leaps to her death rather than submit to him. This pernicious myth of the black man as a predator was being perpetuated cash and says as a way of preventing the races from mixing. From the beginning, that was a central part of the dogma around race and civil rights. You know, the fear that if we give any black freedom, your daughter is going to end up having sex with

the black man. And how enduring and central the political debates around race were tied to this question of interracial marriage and interracial sex. By the mid twentie century, attitudes had calcified, particularly though not exclusively, in the South. In the late nineteen fifties, only four percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Once you put in place an institution that's animated by an ideology, here the ideology white supremacy.

The ideology continues even after the institution slavery ends. Generation after generation is conscripted into this social order which says you should not cross this line. So those habits continue. So it's very hard to disrupt something like that. But disruption finally came in nineteen sixty seven thanks to a couple named Richard and Mildred Loving. The story that began years ago in the farmlands of Caroline County may provide

the landmark decision on interracial marriage. The two had grown up together in Central Point, a small town in Virginia with a long history of white and black residents mixing. Richard was white, Mildred part black, part Native American. The two married in nineteen fifty eight, traveling to Washington, d c. Where they could legally wed. After they took their bows, the Lovings went home to Virginia. Mr Leving, tell me what happened after you got married and when did you

first get into trouble with the law. Um, We've been married on second day of June, and the police came after us the fourteenth of July. We married a month. In a few days, the sheriff of Caroline County and his deputies burst into the Loving's house in the middle of the night, arresting the couple in their bedroom. Mrs Loving. What has been the worst part about all this for you? Well, I guess the worst thing that was in the middle

time in jail. That's the worst thing. The two were sentenced to a year in prison, but the sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not returned together for twenty five years. The Lovings began raising their family in Washington, d c. But after several years, Mildred had had enough. She wanted to live in Virginia with her husband and their children and without fear. The A c. L U took the Lovings case and began a legal battle that would go all the way to

the Supreme Court in nine sixty seven. You couldn't ask for a better case, the Lovings. You know, this is like something out of a movie, right, the Lovings. In June of that year, the Court decided in the Loving's favor, a unanimous decision ruling that the bands on interracial marriage, which still existed in sixteen states, were unconstitutional. These are

not people who would want to be public figures. But it was their deep love for each other and just wanting the right to live in the community they love with the person they love that made them persevere, and only three months later Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith would walk down the aisle and onto a magazine cover the Loving versus Virginia case. Were you following that at all? Were you even aware of it? Vaguely? So you didn't think this thing that's happening kind of applies to me.

They wouldn't have changed your mind. We were going to get married regardless. As their wedding day approached, Peggy Ruskin Guy Smith had managed to stay under the radar even as the country was debating the propriety and legality of interracial marriage, a blessed privacy which lasted almost till the moment they walked out of the Stanford University chapel as man and wife. On September one, Peggy Ruskin Guy Smith were married. Newsreels show the couple emerging from the chapel

at Stanford with smiles on their faces. I think some of the press coverage said that no one seemed less anxious than you and Guy, that you were utterly at ease, were completely but still your eighteen You're walking out of a chapel and there is a phalanx of press there. Did that set you back on your heels a little bit,

you just want with it. The wedding took place in front of about sixty guests, including the bride and groom's parents, but several of Dean Rusk's Georgia relatives refused to attend. Was their disapproval from some members of the family. I'm sure Papa told don't ever show up at a family union again. That's a pretty clear message if the condemnation of his relatives bothered him. Dean Rusk was not one

to share the secretary please, thank you. But according to Peggy, her father was concerned that his daughter's marriage might create problems for President Johnson by risking crucial support from Southerners in Congress, and so, she says, he made a dramatic proposal of his own to the commander in chief. My father went to President Johnson before we got married and offered his resignation, and Johnson said, forget it. You know, I didn't buy the Johnson at all. Did you know

that your father had done that not till afterwards. And what did you think when you heard that? It's like Pop, too, serve the man he's supposed to be serving, and be honest with him about all things. So it was very much in character. This was a very joyous wedding. There was no gloom. And I would go further and say that this maybe a stride in the direction that we all need to be taking with it's very difficult business

of race relations and this area in particular. That's Reverend be Davy Napier, the dean of the Stanford Chapel, who officiated Peggy and Guy's wedding, talking to CBS News, and he was right. There was a lot of joy, but there was also a lot of hate. I showed up at Stanford on Monday, Monday after we got married. They were huge, big male sacks of mail, you know, the

big canvas sacks full of mail. We'd sit on the floor and we'd open letters, and you know, it was pretty easy to tell which were positive, which are negative? What was the ratio about about seventy five negative? And the negatives were usually really thick and full of Bible versus verses and stuff like that. Did any of the nasty e Maale scare you really? Did they include threats? Oh? Yeah? Did you did you report any of those letters? Yeah?

Peggy and Guy took it all in stride. The bad with the good, and perhaps the most surprising moment of all, a week after the wedding, they realized they were on the cover of Time magazine. Time magazine was a big deal back then. You're on the cover of it. Did you know you were going to be on the covered floor? So this hit news stands and you went, that's me and my husband remembering The Godfather when they're walking down the street and they see the headline if what's his name?

The men guy getting shot? Right? And they stopped and go back and look like that. That was us with that magazine. We had no idea and we're walking down the street and all of a sudden, please see a news stand? As you're kidding me? Can I just tell you by the way I held my breath waiting for which scene in The Godfather you were going to site? Thank goodness, it wasn't the Horsehead. No, no, no. Did you immediately buy a copy and read a copy? We

probably bought ten. They had captured the public's attention so much so that when a major motion picture about interracial marriage premiered a few months later, the film would get an unexpected boost of publicity thanks to the extensive coverage

of Peggy and Guy's nuptials. As writer Mark Harris notes in his book Pictures at a Revolution, the wedding quote brought the subject of interracial marriage to the forefront of the national conversation about race, or, as it was bluntly put by New York Post critic Archer Winston, the Dean Rusk family appears to have fronted for this very film.

God that film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with a star studded cast of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier, along with Hepburn's niece Katherine Houghton. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was the story of a white, liberal San Francisco couple forced to confront their own prejudices when their daughter comes home with the black man she intends to marry. And it never occurred to me that I might fall in love with a Negro. But I did.

And nothing in the world is going to change that. Even if you had any objections, I wouldn't let him go. Now, if you are the governor of Alabama. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was filmed before the Loving Versus Virginia decision came down, hence some of the references that had already fallen out of date. Have you thought what people would say about you? Why in sixteen and seventeen states you would be breaking the law, You'd be criminals, and say

they changed the law. That don't change the way people feel about this thing. The movie ends with a stirring speech by Spencer Tracy. It might seem a little hokey today, but it's still a powerful moment, especially given it was Tracy's last moment on screen. He would die just seventeen days after filming. I'm sure you know what you're up against.

There will be a hundred million people right here in this country will be shocked and offended and appalled at the two of you, And the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You can try to ignore those people. Are you gonna feel sorry for them and for their prejudices and their bigotry and their blind hatreds and stupid fears. But we're necessary. You'll just have to cling tight to each other and say, screw all those people,

Guess who's coming to dinner. It was a big hit with audiences. In a little over a year, it was on varieties list of all time box office winners in the company have gone with the Wind and the Sound of Music. The movie was an Awards darling as well, getting nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and winning a Major Acting Award coincidentally presented by Sydney Poitier. The winner is Katherine Hepburn and guest Who's Brother. Which is

not to say everyone loved it. Life magazine's film critic would call the movie an inescapably sentimental occasion. Another person who wasn't a fan, Peggy Rusk, I saw the movie. I didn't relate to it. I thought they made too big a deal about the race. That wasn't how we felt at all. That was actually kind of bored. There are some great performances that I'm a When Guy was deployed as a helicopter pilot to Vietnam after their wedding, he and Peggy wrote to each other every single day,

even after his return. If he was away for a few days, they would write each other. The letters are heartfelt and tender. I love you with all my heart and consider myself the happiest and luckiest girl in the world. So, Darling, I guess that's why I don't fall apart when you have to be away. It's because you are so much a part of my soul that even when you are three thousand miles away, I still feel like you are within me. Take care of lover, and don't work too hard.

I love you very very much and can't wait to be in your arms again. I love Peggy. Guy and Peggy had a daughter, two grandchildren, and it seems a very happy life. The couple had been married for nearly forty five years when Guy died in at age sixty seven. At the end, he was suffering from dementia. Then he got to the point where he um really wouldn't recognize or too much of anything. But I was the one person he still recognized. He he never stopped recognizing. He

never stopped recognizing me. Was was he able to speak a little bit? And his last words, because he died at home in bed, I was holding him, and his last conscious words were to apologize for leaving me alone. So Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith became a part of our cultural history because of what people saw of their marriage from the outside. Two people with different skin colors.

But ultimately this was a love story, this story which a lot of people would use the word hard to describe what that must have been hard that part, you know, it must have been difficult, and you're telling of it. It was just so easy. It was easy. It doesn't need to be hard, is that to love? You know? If the love is there and if it's real, it's all that matters, and it's really powerful, and people just need to stop more in the mouths other stuff and

just it's been a lot more time loving. It's not that hard and it's well worth it. A final note, Peggy told me that if her wedding happened today, it wouldn't be a big story at all, and she's probably right. Remember earlier I mentioned that in the late fifties only four percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage, as that number had grown to I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast.

You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Here. All new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Zoe Marcus and Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilcome Martinez,

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