A Wedding Across the Color Line in Walla Walla
A local preacher marries a white girl and her Chinese partner after her mother grants formal consent.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Rev. A. L. Thoroughman, of the M. E. church, South, achieved a matrimonial record yesterday when he officiated at a double wedding for four colored people and then returned home to find a Chinaman and white girl waiting to be made man and wife. He performed the ceremony. The girl, Bessie Linder, was but 16, and her mother, Mrs. Sarah Lamb, accompanied the girl and her Chinese lover, Frank Leo, to the auditor's office, where she formally gave her consent to the marriage and acted as a witness. The couple hurried to the Chinaman's home, anxious to avoid publicity. Just before the marriage, the mother stated to a reporter that 'Bessie wouldn't give up Frank, and Frank wouldn't give up Bessie, so I decided to let them marry. I guess they have a right to.' The groom is a Chinese doctor here. The mother states the couple have been going together six months, and that it is a love match on both sides. The girl appears intelligent and the Chinaman is Americanized.
“Bessie wouldn't give up Frank, and Frank wouldn't give up Bessie, so I decided to let them marry. I guess they have a right to.”
In 1909, this marriage was newsworthy due to the era's pervasive racial prejudices and legal restrictions against interracial unions. The story captures a rare moment of maternal support for a couple defying the harsh social climate of the Pacific Northwest.
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