Lewis Earl - Love on trial: an American scandal in black and white

LOVE ON TRIAL

AN AMERICAN SCANDAL IN
BLACK AND WHITE

Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone

W . W . NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

Some images in this e-book are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

Copyright 2001 by Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone

All rights reserved

First published as a Norton paperback 2002

Photograph credits: Josephine Baker (Roger-Viollet); composite scene

in judges chambers (New York Evening Graphic); former Jones house (Heidi

Ardizzone); all other photos (Bettmann/Corbis).

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write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

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Book design by JAM design

Production manager: Julia Druskin

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Lewis, Earl.

Love on trial: an American scandal in black and white / Earl Lewis and

Heidi Ardizzone.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-393-05013-0

1. Jones, Alice Beatrice. 2. Rhinelander, Leonard Kip. 3. Interracial marriageNew York (State)Westchester CountyHistoryCase studies. 4. MarriageAnnulmentNew York (State)Westchester CountyHistoryCase studies. 5. ScandalsNew York (State)Westchester CountyHistoryCase studies. 6. Scandals in mass mediaCase studies. 7. Westchester County (N.Y.)Race relationsHistory. I. Ardizzone, Heidi. II. Title.

HQ1031 .L655 2001

306.84'6dc21

00-067005

ISBN 978-0-393-32309-2 pbk.
ISBN 978-0-393-24746-6 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

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To my children, Suzanne and Max

E. L.

To the memory of Beveridge Webster, Frances Webster,

and Joseph R. Ardizzone, and to Dora Ardizzone,

who remembers hearing about the

Rhinelanders as a young girl

H. A.

STROLLING THROUGH THE Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle, the astute observer will gain from the names on the headstones a quick glimpse of the ethnic patterns of settlement along the eastern seaboard for more than a century and a half. Surnames call to mind the ships that brought men, women, and children from Italy, Germany, Russia, Poland, and England. There, nestled among the others, one will find the Jones familyGeorge and Elizabeth and their daughters, Emily, Grace, and Alice. In a far corner of the graveyard their flat, simple stones mark their resting places with only their names and dates.

Only a mile or so from the cemetery sits the home they shared and left, one by one. Set back from the street, their small home, now divided into apartments, sits between two larger, looming houses that face Long Island Sound on Pelham Road, which runs along the shoreline. Here George and Elizabeth raised their daughters, watched them grow, worked hard to provide for them. One by one the daughters marriedEmily first, a local man named Robert Brooks. Her parents disapproved of the match, and the Brookses moved to a neighboring town and had a child. Grace married next, an Italian (despite his name), Albert Footsie Miller, and the couple moved into her parents home. Alice, still single, continued to work and live with her parents. Through Grace, Alice eventually met the man she would marry. The three met outside the sisters home on Pelham Road. For three years Alice had loved him while he came into and went from her life, waiting for him to return and marry her.

In the old downtown area on Huguenot Street stands the Pintard Apartments, in which Alice and her husband planned to live. Then new, modern, and exclusive, it is now a fading brick building, no doubt prized for its old-fashioned wood floors and high ceilings, no doubt still expensive.

They never occupied the apartment they had rented.

ALICES HUSBAND IS not buried beside her. Neither is Graces: They divorced and Grace later remarried, moving to California. Emilys husband and child are both with her in the cemetery. But Alices husband is interred in the Second Oldest Organization in Bronx Countythe Woodlawn Cemetery. The Rhinelander plot is marked by a large marble building, in which the bodies of its family members lie in drawers, one on top of the other. It would be difficult to miss were it not surrounded by similar mournful architectural and stone-carved homages to passed souls. The entire graveyard is surround by high walls and guarded at the entrances against intruders. Once set in the countryside of northern New York City, Woodlawn now shares its neighborhood with bars, high-rises, and convenience stores with bulletproof windows and metal gratings across the doors. It harkens back to a time when the Bronx was a place of privilege and leisure, maintains its identity as a cultural organization and a rural cemetery, and provides the final resting place for such varied figures as Miles Davis, Irving Berlin, F. W. Woolworth, Fiorello La Guardia, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Madame C. J. Walker, Herman Melville, Joseph Pulitzer, and Countee Cullen.

Leonard Rhinelanders remains are there, with those of his mother, who died when he was a child, and his father, who outlived him by only four years. All of Leonards siblings are there as well, including a brother who died in infancy and one who died during World War I, and a sister and brother who outlived him. The plot was owned by one of Leonards grandfathers, also interred there, and was planned to provide Like Alices, Leonards remains are with those of his birth family.

ALICE OUTLIVED HER husband by almost sixty years. But that is not why they were not buried together.

ALICE BEATRICE JONES and Leonard Kip Rhinelander met in September 1921 and married in October 1924. Three weeks later their marriage made headlines across the country. Two weeks after that he left her, claiming that she had misrepresented herself to him and that he would not have married her had he known who she truly was. There are many ways to try to explain what happened to tear them apart so soon after their weddingwhat had changed in those six weeks despite their having stayed faithful to each other for three years, often across long distances. Perhaps, most fundamentally, it simply came down to who their fathers were and what that meant in the 1920s United States.

Philip Rhinelander, an officer of the Rhinelander Real Estate Company, controlled millions both personally and on behalf of his well-heeled family. Listed in the Social Register, he was descended from several of New Yorks founding families, an American version of aristocracy. Given all that, it went without saying that he was white. George Jones was an English immigrant who had met his wife while they were both working as servants on a large estate in Leeds. Elizabeth was white. But George? Well, nobody was exactly sure what George was; some of the headlines announcing Alice and Leonards marriage proclaimed him a colored man. What exactly that meant is something of a mystery, but if he was colored he couldnt be white. And if he wasnt white, then by American racial definitions Alice certainly wasnt. But even those who werent sure about the Joneses racial status could find sensation in the tremendous class differences between the lovers.

In New York, at least, the marriage became the scandal of the decade. By the time Leonards annulment suit went into a public, juried trial, people throughout the country knew about the Rhinelander Case. And the primary way they heard about it was through the newspapers.press organizations, including the Associated Press, daily updates on the Westchester County trial appeared on the doorsteps of Americans across the nation. Although some sought to censor or minimize aspects of the trial, none could completely ignore it.