Jake and Mary Jacobs celebrated 70 years of wedded bliss, but this couple has overcome all the obstacles to reach such a marriage milestone.
When Mary, who is White, met Jake, who is Black, it was 1940s Britain and although they lived in the city, Jake was one of very few black men.
It would have been easy for Mary to walk away, but she had fallen in love and would do anything to stay with her lover, even after her father told her to leave.
“When I told my father I was going to marry Jake he said, ‘If you marry that man you will never set foot in this house again.’”
What was it like to be in a mixed race relationship in the 1940s and 50s? We meet Jake and Mary Jacobs who got married in 1948 pic.twitter.com/E56ZP6QLbs
— BBC Radio 2 (@BBCRadio2) October 13, 2016
The couple had met when Jake came over from Trinidad during the war, and they had attended the same technical college where Mary was having typing and shorthand lessons and he was training with the Air Force.
Mary, who lived in Lancashire at the time, and Jake got chatting and he impressed Mary with his knowledge of Shakespeare.
He and his friend invited Mary and her friend out for a picnic, and they were spotted by a lady cycling past who was shocked to see two English girls chatting with black men so she reported Mary to her father. Her father was shocked and banned Mary from seeing him again.
When Jake returned to Trinidad, they wrote to each other and a few years later he returned to the UK to get better paid work.
Jake surprised Mary by asking her to marry him; she was 19 and agreed, 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 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 because people were pointing 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.
Their lives became easier when Mary worked as a teacher and rose to assistant principal of a British school and Jake secured a job with the Post Office. They made new friends, but Mary said she felt the need to explain to people that her husband was black before she introduced them to him.
“My father died when I was 30 and although we were reconciled by then, he never did approve of Jake,” she said.
Today Mary, 84, and Jake, 89, live in the town of Solihull, south of Birmingham, and recently celebrated 70 years of marriage.
Jake says he has no regrets but tells young black people today they have no idea what it used to be like for him in 1940s Britain.
“When I arrived in the UK. I was subjected to a-b.use every day. Once I was sitting on the bus and a man rubbed his hands on my neck and said: ‘I wanted to see if the dirt would come off.'”
“And back then you couldn’t work in an office – because a black man in an office with all white girls wasn’t considered safe.”
Despite all the hardships, prejudices, and mistreatment, the couple is still very much in love and does not regret the marriage, but rather enjoys over 70 years of wedded bliss.
These two’s love for each other overcame everything; They are a true inspiration and I wish them many more years of happiness.
