Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Africana Studies, Law, and Sociology & Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights.
“Love, race, and family in America have always been intertwined,” Roberts says. “Our most intimate relationships are shaped by racial boundaries—and can also defy them.”
Blending memoir, history, and social analysis, “The Mixed Marriage Project” arrives at a moment of renewed national debate over race, belonging, and the meaning of family in American life. The book intertwines Roberts’ lived experiences as the child of a mixed marriage with her parents’ broader study of interracial couples in Chicago spanning the 1880s through the Civil Rights era.
Growing up in a deeply segregated Chicago in the 1960s as the daughter of a white anthropologist father and a Black Jamaican immigrant mother, interracial marriage was rare. Yet, her father was committed to advancing the idea that mixed marriage had the power to promote social equality.
“For my entire life until that discovery, I saw my father’s research on interracial marriage—and the faith he had in its promise—as a reflection of his love for my mother,” Roberts explains. “Learning that he began interviewing Black-white couples more than a decade before he met her upended that family narrative and sent my mind racing with questions.”
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