When interracial couples were illegal

It was not between any races, but specifically between Blacks and Whites. Also, things were already changing by 1967, it just took that long for the case to get up to the Supreme Court. There were some Southern states which allowed "inter-racial" marriage.  To demonstrate how rapidly things were changing, in 1965 there was a large billboard on State road 87 leading to Fayetteville, North Carolina, that showed a horse mounted Klansman under the legend "Join and Support the United Klans of America". In 1975, Black/White couples could be seen walking on the streets of Fayetteville, holding hands.  I doubt that such would have been possible in the not too distant Johnston County at the time.

Racial segregation also existed in many Latin American countries. In Costa Rica, for example, Blacks were not allowed to travel beyond Turialba until after 1948. In some countries, they were not allowed to inhabit dwellings beyond a certain distance from the (banana company) railroad tracks. Adalberto Ortiz captured the plight of Esmeraldas province (Ecuador) blacks in his novel "Juyungo". In Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, Black couples were routinely refused seating in many high class clubs and restaurants in the 1930s and 40s. Racial policies in Latin America, generally, were based upon a social preference for lighter skin, rather than any outright banning of Blacks. Thus intermarriages were possible, but "Abuelita" tended to favor her lighter grandchildren over the darker ones. Crude racial jokes are still common in many Latin countries. North Americans may have had the advantage is having such distasteful segregation laws. They forced American society to face them head-on, rather than acknowledging them with a wink.

All of which earns Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein/Edna Ferber's Show Boat a special place in the history of musical comedy.

In re: "The majority of Blacks came to coastal Central America as "contract" laborers drawn from the English Caribbean and Haiti." 

True. In Panama, and I presume the remainder of Central America, laws applying to the "Antillanos" did not apply to "Criollo" Blacks. Esmeraldas province Blacks, however, were largely descended from escaped slaves. My "digression" merely intended to point out that no part of the Americas was totally free of race bias. And the U.S. insistence of de jure institutionalization may have made it easier to recognize and remedy than the de facto racial prejudices common to Latin society.

While Show Boat started as a Ferber novel, it seems to me that the use of the theme in a musical comedy marked more of a breakthrough into popular consciousness than its appearance in book form. It's worth noting too that it didn't break through into a film until 1936, though there was an emasculated version filmed in 1929 that deleted the racial issue.

Edited by gcle2003 - 14-Jun-2009 at 21:57

Show Boat was white man/coloured woman.

In the context on interracial love (between Black and White) in pictorial media one can notice that one of the first black - white kisses on American TV was a kiss between Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) in a 1968 episode of Star Trek. It is said that some stations in the South originally refused to air the episode.

Originally posted by gcle2003 Originally posted by drgonzaga The 1929 film has only "Old Man River" in common with the original 1927 Broadway musical since the music in the film was provided by Billy Rose; Then why doesn't he get the credit? (link)