Jake surprised Mary by asking her to marry him; she was 19 years old and accepted but when she told her family they threw her out.
“I left with only one small suitcase to my name. No family came to our registry office wedding in 1948.”
Mary said while her father was ‘horrified’ that she could contemplate marrying a black man she didn’t realize that the rest of society felt the same way.
“The first years of our marriage living in Birmingham were hell — I cried every day, and barely ate. No one would speak to us, we couldn’t find anywhere to live because no one would rent to a black man, and we had no money.”
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Even walking down the street together was difficult as people would point at them, Mary told the Daily Mail.
Mary fell pregnant and the couple enjoyed the excitement of knowing they would soon become parents but at 8 months she gave birth to a stillborn child.
“It wasn’t related to the stress I was under but it broke my heart, and we never had any more children,” she said.