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Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White
An account of the public uproar over the 1924 marriage of a wealthy Manhattanite to a woman of mixed racial ancestry raises issues of race and identity that persist in modern society.
301 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 14, 2021
This was fast paced and fascinating.
I'm really surprised this case has been forgotten to the extent that it has.
Basically a white man from a wealthy and well connected FAMILY married an octroon or quadroon who's parents were from the UK which seems to have enabled the family to move and exist in mostly white spaces.
Still the wife would've been considered colored or a negro in that time period. Not so much today.
The husband lives with her & her family off and on for 3 yrs before the marriage. One of her sisters married a white man and the other married a Black man and had a child with him.
So this family doesn't seem to be passing so much as taking advantage of their access to British whiteness and special-negro status.
The wife's father is biracial with a white mom and a father from the Colonies, presumably Black. It's unclear as race is handled very differently in the UK at this time.
I enjoyed the exploration of the differences in how this case was covered in the white & Black Communities.
The husband's father pushes for the divorce and the treatment of the wife is brutal, including her striping off her clothes to show how dark her skin is, it's humiliating on every level.
Interestingly both of the lawyers, for the husband suing for annulment on the grounds his wife hid her race and the lawyer for the wife maintaining that her husband knew very well she had colored ancestry, make cringeworthy and horribly racist arguments in defense of their clients opposing interests.
The low rating is a reflection of authors own bias & antiblackness.
There's a comparison made that a white man who makes a living as a black-face entertainer is not quite white by virtue of him engaging in the racist practice of black-face!?!
A silly and offensive take.
Also the author weirdly ignores that Margaret Sanger far from 'ignoring' Black women, had a plan for them to be sterilized in an attempt at genocide of Black Americans. The fuck she did forget about us. The wicked bitch gave talks on family planning to the KKK ladies group🙄 she did not forget about us to our detriment.
The author is just weird about race in multiple ways.
Hence the low rating.
I'm really surprised this case has been forgotten to the extent that it has.
Basically a white man from a wealthy and well connected FAMILY married an octroon or quadroon who's parents were from the UK which seems to have enabled the family to move and exist in mostly white spaces.
Still the wife would've been considered colored or a negro in that time period. Not so much today.
The husband lives with her & her family off and on for 3 yrs before the marriage. One of her sisters married a white man and the other married a Black man and had a child with him.
So this family doesn't seem to be passing so much as taking advantage of their access to British whiteness and special-negro status.
The wife's father is biracial with a white mom and a father from the Colonies, presumably Black. It's unclear as race is handled very differently in the UK at this time.
I enjoyed the exploration of the differences in how this case was covered in the white & Black Communities.
The husband's father pushes for the divorce and the treatment of the wife is brutal, including her striping off her clothes to show how dark her skin is, it's humiliating on every level.
Interestingly both of the lawyers, for the husband suing for annulment on the grounds his wife hid her race and the lawyer for the wife maintaining that her husband knew very well she had colored ancestry, make cringeworthy and horribly racist arguments in defense of their clients opposing interests.
The low rating is a reflection of authors own bias & antiblackness.
There's a comparison made that a white man who makes a living as a black-face entertainer is not quite white by virtue of him engaging in the racist practice of black-face!?!
A silly and offensive take.
Also the author weirdly ignores that Margaret Sanger far from 'ignoring' Black women, had a plan for them to be sterilized in an attempt at genocide of Black Americans. The fuck she did forget about us. The wicked bitch gave talks on family planning to the KKK ladies group🙄 she did not forget about us to our detriment.
The author is just weird about race in multiple ways.
Hence the low rating.
June 17, 2023
I first heard about this case in Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America. Alice Jones married one of the sons of the Rhinelander family (the rich family that gets its own train station in New York) and when pressured by his family, the "man" filed for an annulment, claiming that Jones had lied about being coloured or black.
She hadn't.
Jones hailed from an interracial family. Both her parents were/considered themselves British. Jones had two sisters - one of whom married an African-American, and another whose first husband was Italian.
It is too the credit of Lewis and Ardizzone look at how the trial dealt with or presented race, gender, and class. (According to the note at the end, Lewis was Ardizzone's thesis advisor and this book grew out of her thesis). It also deals with the radically different ways that the British and Americans defined the term black and how the news media of the time dealt with the case.
It is extremely readable and fast placed. And considering the lack of sources about Alice Jones, it succeeds in bringing her to life in a way that well includes pity and horror at what she went though, doesn't confine her to be defined solely by that.
(As an aside, it took me a week to read this because I was scoring tests. This is a book that can be read in two days or less because it is so readable and well written. Also I got an used edition and it was filled with remarks from the previous reader that actually made it even more fun to read).
She hadn't.
Jones hailed from an interracial family. Both her parents were/considered themselves British. Jones had two sisters - one of whom married an African-American, and another whose first husband was Italian.
It is too the credit of Lewis and Ardizzone look at how the trial dealt with or presented race, gender, and class. (According to the note at the end, Lewis was Ardizzone's thesis advisor and this book grew out of her thesis). It also deals with the radically different ways that the British and Americans defined the term black and how the news media of the time dealt with the case.
It is extremely readable and fast placed. And considering the lack of sources about Alice Jones, it succeeds in bringing her to life in a way that well includes pity and horror at what she went though, doesn't confine her to be defined solely by that.
(As an aside, it took me a week to read this because I was scoring tests. This is a book that can be read in two days or less because it is so readable and well written. Also I got an used edition and it was filled with remarks from the previous reader that actually made it even more fun to read).
March 1, 2013
I assigned this to my survey on American history, and I think it went really well. It's a very readable book (the students said it read like fiction), while still tapping into the scholarly arguments about the social construction of race and changing nature of gender and sexuality.
July 30, 2011
"Love on Trial: Am American Scandal in Black and White" is a scholarly look at a salacious annulment trial. This book gave me a great deal of context for a personal family legend about my great-grandparents, purported to be in love but forced apart by societal and familial prejudices. It is especially valuable for my interests because the primary events discussed are in the same time frame (early 1920's) as are the events of my great-grandparents' story.
Alternating between hooky writing about the principals and dry analysis of the significance and particularly the newspaper coverage of the case held my rapt attention throughout. I wouldn't have guessed myself so far removed from my college days as to have come full circle, staying up half the night to read a textbook for pleasure, but it appears that I am. By the final chapters, I felt invested in the outcome of the case.
I would recommend this book to those interested in race, class, or gender studies in history. Lovers of narrative nonfiction might pass on this one, or skip the analysis sections.
Alternating between hooky writing about the principals and dry analysis of the significance and particularly the newspaper coverage of the case held my rapt attention throughout. I wouldn't have guessed myself so far removed from my college days as to have come full circle, staying up half the night to read a textbook for pleasure, but it appears that I am. By the final chapters, I felt invested in the outcome of the case.
I would recommend this book to those interested in race, class, or gender studies in history. Lovers of narrative nonfiction might pass on this one, or skip the analysis sections.
January 20, 2021
Interesting read. A young lady who considers herself “colored”, not “black”, marries a wealthy New Yorker. His family breaks them apart and forces him to sue for a annulment stating he didn’t know she was a negro or he would not have married her. This was back in the twenties when it was illegal for black and whites to marry. The trial was a huge media sensation. Was the rich guy duped by the colored girl for his riches? How did he not know she was colored. Her father and sister were obviously black and he spent a lot of time with them. She loved him and wanted him back. But his family tried to play the race card then the class card. Thank goodness trials aren’t run like that any longer.
September 2, 2019
The first book I've highlighted and made notes in in a long while. A text I will use regularly in my high school English classes.
June 23, 2021
For the most part, this book is very well researched and well-written. There is a lot of speculation about how the participants felt about certain parts of the proceedings, but all of it is marked as speculation in the writing. The story is well-documented, well-organized and well-worded.
It is a heartbreaking story, and hard to read at times for that reason, though the writing is easy to absorb. The authors did a great job showcasing the absurdity of racial pigeonholing and the chronology is easy to follow.
All in all, a heartbreaking, well-researched, well-written true story. Very much enjoyed it.
It is a heartbreaking story, and hard to read at times for that reason, though the writing is easy to absorb. The authors did a great job showcasing the absurdity of racial pigeonholing and the chronology is easy to follow.
All in all, a heartbreaking, well-researched, well-written true story. Very much enjoyed it.
October 23, 2023
I had to read this for school and I definitely wouldn’t have read it otherwise. I’m polysci so usually this stuff is so interesting to me, but not this time. It was so boring a slow. Not to mention I knew how it would end four chapters before it did. The reason it’s 3/5 is cause the material is important to know to understanding American history. Basically just a story of how people got divorced.
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October 26, 2023*school*
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March 11, 2022The lawsuit brought by Leonard Rhinelander against his wife Alice Jones for misrepresenting herself as a white woman disappeared from the headlines over 97 years ago but few Americans living at the time could forget the case or the verdict. Long before OJ Simpson made national headlines when he was charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, this trial captured American’s attention ;making headlines throughout the states and various media outlets and was considered the trial of the century. Now the public can relive this experience as authors Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone recounts the ordeal in Love on Trial An American Scandal in Black and White
In the early 1920’s, Leonard Rhineland, a wealthy and prominent man from an American aristocratic family met and fell in love with Alice Jones, a nanny and the daughter of an English mother and a possible biracial father who immigrated from England and settled in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York.
The couple had a 3 year courtship in which they maintain most communication through letters. Leonard would also sometime visits the Jones home where he met the rest of her family member including her parents, two sisters, one who was married to a dark skin black man and a niece from that marriage. To the obvious on looker Alice could’ve been considered white or darker ethnic white ,so she had access to places most African Americans weren’t privy to. Alice had no difficulty navigating Leonard’s world without much objections .
However this quickly changed a couple of weeks after the couple were wed . According to Leonard ,he became aware of Alice’s “negro blood “ and decided to file for an annulment in the White Plains court. What followed was a media circuit that was unprecedented. Every sordid detail of the 4 year relationship was made fodder for public consumption. All of the couple’s intimate love letters were on display, some of the sordid details of their exploits were considered too delicate for a woman’s ears. At one point during the trial Alice’s attorney asked her to disrobe in front of the jury to proved that Leonard was aware that his wife was black.
The media circuit kept to the pace of the trial as the two attorneys sought to win their respective cases . Leonard’s attorney wanted to prove that Alice was a seductive vamp that took advantage of his client’s innocence and simple mindedness to gain wealth and status in his world. Alice’s lawyer wanted the jury to know that Leonard was well aware of her color and didn’t care. Several members of the community were called as witnesses including an actor that was known to perform in black face. The trial lasted for approximately two months and when the verdict was rendered it was obvious to most but still shocking .
In the early 1920’s, Leonard Rhineland, a wealthy and prominent man from an American aristocratic family met and fell in love with Alice Jones, a nanny and the daughter of an English mother and a possible biracial father who immigrated from England and settled in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York.
The couple had a 3 year courtship in which they maintain most communication through letters. Leonard would also sometime visits the Jones home where he met the rest of her family member including her parents, two sisters, one who was married to a dark skin black man and a niece from that marriage. To the obvious on looker Alice could’ve been considered white or darker ethnic white ,so she had access to places most African Americans weren’t privy to. Alice had no difficulty navigating Leonard’s world without much objections .
However this quickly changed a couple of weeks after the couple were wed . According to Leonard ,he became aware of Alice’s “negro blood “ and decided to file for an annulment in the White Plains court. What followed was a media circuit that was unprecedented. Every sordid detail of the 4 year relationship was made fodder for public consumption. All of the couple’s intimate love letters were on display, some of the sordid details of their exploits were considered too delicate for a woman’s ears. At one point during the trial Alice’s attorney asked her to disrobe in front of the jury to proved that Leonard was aware that his wife was black.
The media circuit kept to the pace of the trial as the two attorneys sought to win their respective cases . Leonard’s attorney wanted to prove that Alice was a seductive vamp that took advantage of his client’s innocence and simple mindedness to gain wealth and status in his world. Alice’s lawyer wanted the jury to know that Leonard was well aware of her color and didn’t care. Several members of the community were called as witnesses including an actor that was known to perform in black face. The trial lasted for approximately two months and when the verdict was rendered it was obvious to most but still shocking .
September 22, 2020
An interesting look at race, class, and money in America. How and why do we classify people, and should we? What difference does it make to people's lives? The marriage of Alice Jones and Leonard Rhinelander brought up all these issues and more as Leonard, or probably his father, brought a case for annulment after only a few weeks of marriage upon "discovering" Alice had "colored blood."
The case itself is set in the 1920s, but clearly our country hasn't yet come to the end of all of these questions.
The case itself is set in the 1920s, but clearly our country hasn't yet come to the end of all of these questions.
November 9, 2009
A bit academic, but an amazing look at race and gender relations in the 1920s.
March 30, 2012
I loved it. Great story of race relations in the NY area in the 1920s.
November 30, 2012
Excellent book
November 11, 2013
Very interesting book. A truly sad situation Alice Jones Rhinelander had to go through.
July 24, 2014
Interesting and well-researched.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews