Intermarried...with Children

For all the talk of cultural separatism, the races that make up the U.S. are now crossbreeding at unprecedented rates.

Hostile stares and epithets were the least of their problems when Edgar and Jean Cahn first dated. Twice the couple -- he a white Jew, she a black Baptist -- were arrested simply for walking the streets of Baltimore arm in arm. When they wed in 1957, Maryland law barred interracial marriages, so the ceremony was held in New York City. Although Jean had converted by then, the only rabbi who would agree to officiate denied them a huppah and the traditional breaking of glass. As law students at Yale in the 1960s, the couple lived in a basement because no...

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