Ринеландерлер ісі: Әлеуметтік және нәсілдік шиеленістер

American court case
Rhinelander v. Rhinelander was a divorce case between Kip Rhinelander and Alice Jones. Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander (May 9, 1903 – February 20, 1936) was an American socialite and a member of the socially prominent and wealthy New York City Rhinelander family. His marriage at the age of 21 to Alice Jones, a biracial woman who was a working class daughter of English immigrants, made national headlines in 1924. Their 1925 divorce trial highlighted contemporary strains related to the instability of the upper class, as well as racial anxiety about "passing" at a time when New York was a destination for numerous blacks from the South in the Great Migration and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The trial also touched on the vague legal definition of the time as to who was to be considered "white" or "colored," alternately portraying race as biologically determined and knowable or as more fluid. Interracial marriages in New York State were legal, but rare.

Rhinelander was born in 1903 in Pelham, New York, to Adelaide Brady (née Kip) and Philip Jacob Rhinelander. Nicknamed "Kip" (his mother's maiden name), Rhinelander was the youngest of five children, including four sons and one daughter. The couple's eldest child, Isaac Leonard Kip, died in infancy. Rhinelander's mother Adelaide died on September 11, 1915, after sustaining burns when an alcohol lamp on her dressing table exploded. The third son, T. J. Oakley Rhinelander, died in France in 1918 while serving in the 107th Regiment during World War I. The immigrant ancestor of the Rhinelander family in America was Philip Jacob Rhinelander, a German born French Huguenot who immigrated to North America in 1686 to escape religious persecution following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He settled in the newly formed French Huguenot community of New Rochelle in 1686, where he amassed considerable property holdings, the basis for the family's wealth. The Rhinelanders are considered one of the nation's earliest shipbuilders. The family also had holdings in real estate and owned the Rhinelander Real Estate Company. By the late 19th century, many members of the family were active in philanthropic causes and were active in New York high society. the daughter of a working class family. The two met while Rhinelander was attending the Orchard School in Stamford, Connecticut, an inpatient clinic where he was seeking treatment to help him overcome extreme shyness and to cure his stuttering. Jones was a few years older than Rhinelander and the daughter of English immigrants; her mother was white and her father was of mixed race (then termed "mulatto"). It was reported that, during their three year relationship, Jones' father, George, attempted to dissuade the couple from continuing their romance. George Jones reportedly tried appealing to Rhinelander that his family would never accept his daughter due to their differences in class. The marriage certificate listed both the groom and the bride as "white." Once Jones' ethnicity came into question, the fact that her marriage license identified her as "white" was reported, implying that she had sought to hide her mixed racial ancestry. During the trial, Jones' attorney asked Leonard Rhinelander whether the city hall clerk who had filled out their marriage license had asked either of them whether they were white or "colored." Rhinelander said the clerk had not. The newlyweds rented an apartment in New Rochelle, ordered furniture and moved in with Jones' parents in Pelham Manor while setting up their household. Rhinelander did not tell his family of the marriage, but continued to stay in Manhattan and work at Rhinelander Real Estate Company during the week. The New York Evening Post picked up the story but was hesitant to identify Jones' father as black. They instead referred to George Jones as being "West Indian." Other papers picked up the story but most were also careful to omit the racial angle, choosing instead of focus on the differences in Rhinelander and Jones’ social class. In a number of newspapers, Jones was variously identified as a nanny, a nurse or a laundress. Other media accounts referred to the jobs of Jones’ family; her father was identified as a cab driver or stagecoach driver and her uncle as a butler, which at the time were understood to be positions held mainly by black people The Hearst owned tabloid New York Daily Mirror, however, ran a front page banner headline: "RHINELANDER WEDS NEGRESS/Society dumbfounded." And the black newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier referred to both parties' races, with the front page headline "Caucasian '400' Stunned Over Marriage of White Millionaire to Colored Beauty." Most larger city papers were wary of printing such a scandalous story, deferential to or fearful of the Rhinelanders' wealth and prominent social status.

For a time, Rhinelander stood by his wife during the intense national coverage of their marriage. But after two weeks under a threat of disinheritance, he succumbed to his family's demands that he leave Jones and signed an annulment complaint that his father's lawyers had prepared. The document asserted that Jones had intentionally deceived Rhinelander by hiding her true race and had passed as a white woman. Jones' attorney denied Rhinelander's claim on her behalf, saying that her mixed race was obvious. Rhinelander later said that Jones hadn't deceived him outright but did so by letting him believe she was white. The ensuing divorce trial in New Rochelle was known as Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and attracted national attention. Rhinelander's attorney was Isaac N. Mills, a former New York Supreme Court justice. Jones retained a former protégé of Mills, Lee Parsons Davis. The jury was all white and all male. Jones' attorney Davis said openly that his client and Rhinelander had engaged in sex before they were married; he read love letters written by Rhinelander that detailed the couple's intimate sexual activity. "It was a year long event marked by several bizarre developments, including rumors of bribery and extortion, public reading of Leonard's love letters, the partial disrobing of the defendant so that the jurors could examine her skin." The trial was notorious for Jones being asked to display a portion of her body to the jury in the judge's chambers. Wearing a coat over underwear, she dropped the coat to the top of her breasts so they could see her shoulders; then she pulled it up so they could see her lower legs. The question of "whiteness" was not litigated, but this was Davis' attempt to show what Rhinelander would have seen. (245 N. Y. 510). The annulment Rhinelander requested was denied and the marriage was upheld. "Alice's court victory may have been enabled by the fact that Alice performed her racial identity as the all white, male, married jurors expected of a colored woman, and that Leonard failed to perform his racial, gender, and class identities as expected of him as a white, wealthy gentleman." Rhinelander appealed several times but the verdict was upheld. He disappeared from public view but was discovered living in Nevada in July 1929. Rhinelander was using the assumed name "Lou Russell," had grown a mustache, put on weight and was working as a woodcutter. Jones remained in New York where she filed a separation suit against Rhinelander, charging him with abandonment and his father with interference with the marriage. In December 1929, Rhinelander was granted a divorce by default in Las Vegas. The divorce was not recognized in New York, where Jones still had a separation suit pending. Rhinelander and Jones eventually reached a settlement in the separation suit. Rhinelander was ordered to pay Jones a lump sum of $32,500 (approximately $) and $3,600 a year for the remainder of her life—$300 a month, which was never adjusted for inflation. In return, Jones forfeited all claims to the Rhinelander estate and agreed not to use the Rhinelander name or to speak publicly or write about her story. She honored those terms for the rest of her life. On February 20, 1936, at the age of 32, Rhinelander died of lobar pneumonia at his father's home in Long Beach, New York. After Rhinelander's death, his father, Philip, followed the advice of the family attorney and continued to pay Jones her yearly settlement money. However, when Phillip died four years later in March 1940, at age 74, leaving his multimillion dollar estate to his lone surviving child, Adelaide, as well as two nieces, and two granddaughters, Adelaide promptly stopped the quarterly payments. The disbursements accounted for only 0.0004 of the estate, but the heirs opposed them as "an onerous demand for life support." Jones took Phillip Rhinelander's heirs to court. After two years of court battles, the New York Supreme Court upheld the original settlement agreement, and the heirs resumed Jones' payments. After her final court battle with the Rhinelanders, Alice Jones remained out of the public eye. She also never remarried; she continued to live with her parents in Pelham Manor until their deaths. Alice Jones died in a Westchester hospital on September 13, 1989, of a heart attack caused by a stroke and hypertension. Her bank account contained $25,000 and she owned a one third interest in her family home on Pelham Road, worth about $70,000. Her death certificate indicated that she had spent nearly a year in hospitalization. In the novel, Clare marries John Bellew, a wealthy white man, who is not aware of her true racial identity. The literature as well as the Rhinelander case explore the complexity of racial identity in a public institution such as marriage. The Rhinelander Case also appears in Oscar Micheaux's films, The House Behind the Cedars and Thirty Years Later. The case also served as the basis for the movie Night of the Quarter Moon (1959), starring Julie London and John Drew Barrymore.

Leonard Rhinelander v. Alice Rhinelander; 219 A. D. 189; 219 N. Y. S. 548; Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department (1927).