The Marriage Wasn’t About Race—Until the Trial

The fact is, the love story of Leonard Rhinelander and Alice Jones had nothing to do with race until the trial was brought, intended to end their marriage. Then race became a useful cudgel. Throughout their courtship – even when Leonard’s father sent a lawyer and detectives to their hotel room to physically separate them, sending Leonard on a lengthy trip with one of those detectives – the father’s objection was not racial but social: his son being involved with a young woman from a dreadfully lower class who was not acceptable to a Rhinelander. Even so, after years of struggle and living on letters, Alice and Leonard secretly married.

Their marriage was revealed by a particularly racist headline in a tabloid: “RHINELANDER SCION MARRIES THE DAUGHTER OF A COLORED MAN” Alice Jones, whose mother was English and her father was part “Caribbean,” had lived her entire life as a white person. She was suddenly deemed Black, particularly by the Rhinelander lawyers who brought the matter to court.

Alice never denied that identity, only was confused at first, then alarmed by how the newspapers used it to affect the entire world around her. In the trial, however, she was accused of deceiving Leonard by playing at being white, and that he would never have married her if he’d known. Alice immediately admitted to the court that she probably had “black blood” in her veins, but that it never mattered to either Leonard or to her.

The Rhinelander lawyers nevertheless charged her with fraud to justify an annulment.