In 1925 Leonard Rhinelander, the youngest son of a wealthy New York
society family, sued to end his marriage to Alice Jones, a former
domestic servant and the daughter of a "colored" cabman. After
being married only one month, Rhinelander pressed for the
dissolution of his marriage on the grounds that his wife had lied
to him about her racial background. The subsequent marital
annulment trial became a massive public spectacle, not only in New
York but across the nation--despite the fact that the state had
never outlawed interracial marriage.
Elizabeth Smith-Pryor makes extensive use of trial transcripts, in
addition to contemporary newspaper coverage and archival sources,
to explore why Leonard Rhinelander was allowed his day in court.
She moves fluidly between legal history, a day-by-day narrative of
the trial itself, and analyses of the trial's place in the culture
of the 1920s North to show how notions of race, property, and the
law were--and are--inextricably intertwined.