Terry,

When the professor left W&M in 1956, it was of course the year after the
SCOTUS had refused in the Naim case to overturn Virginia's restriction on
interracial marriage. It was also the point at which the Massive Resistance
campaign was torquing up. I believe Goodrich from Surry, a big massive
resister who was active in the Defenders, was on the BOV of the college.
Quite a threatening environment for the English professor.

On the other hand, when I was growing up in the early 1960s in Hampton,
there were some students in high school with me whose mother's were
Japanese and father's were in the Air Force. There were some married
Japanese-American couples in our neighborhood,too. Nothing was said then
and the interracial marriage law was still in effect, though not enforced.

Jim

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 12:14 PM Meyers, Terry L <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>
> >Newspapers are a crucial resource in researching Asian Pacific Islander
> >Desi American (APIDA) history in Virginia. Learn about the some of the
> >stories uncovered in today's The UncommonWealth.
>
>
>
>         Thanks for this--fascinating.
>
>         W&M has done some preliminary work related to the subject, which
> is also interesting.
>
>
> https://scdbwiki.swem.wm.edu/wiki/index.php/Asian_Americans_at_William_%26_Mary
>
>         Our first Japanese student, Art Matsu (Class of 1928) was
> supposedly (according to his entry in Wikipedia) an element in the
> development of Virginia’s Racial Purity Act of 1924.
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Matsu#cite_note-NBT-15
>
>         And Virginia’s laws against interracial marriage did lead to one
> professor here, married to a Japanese woman, feel in 1956 that he had to
> flee the state.
>
>
> https://scdbwiki.swem.wm.edu/wiki/index.php/Travis_L._Summersgill
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College
> of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg  23187
>
> ————————————————————————————————————————————————————
>
>
>  Have we got a college?  Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't
> afford both.   Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
>  --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
>
>
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