Banner photo, “Along Lake George 1933,” used with permission from Hobart Historical Society.
Every time I think about this old photograph, taken in the summer of 1933 on the shores of Lake George in Hobart, Indiana, it stirs up a flood of emotions: Some good and some sad.
I also lived here but wouldn’t come along for another 25 years.
Looking at these people, probably all long dead, makes me wonder how they felt about non-white or mixed-race human beings.
Three years earlier, in Marion, Indiana, a mob beat and lynched two black men for allegedly raping a white woman.
As I studied the photo some more, I tried to imagine a scenario in which a lone bluesman (perhaps the black biological father I never knew) takes a wrong turn and wanders into this crowd, asking for directions or maybe a place to get a meal and rest his weary bones.
Suppose he walked up to the four young women and smiled. How would they react?
Would the boys on the makeshift platform suddenly dive into the water, swim to shore, and attack him?
Would everyone scatter into their homes and call the police, telling them there’s a dangerous negro on the loose?
Any number of situations and outcomes might be possible, with one exception:
It’s doubtful that anyone would have lived up to Hobart’s moniker as “The Friendly City” and tried to help this man.
What is the Two-Drop Rule?
It’s my rejection of America’s Jim Crow era “one-drop rule,” which states that anyone with a single drop of “black” blood flowing in their veins is officially defined as negroid and therefore relegated to “minority” status. I entered the world as a mulatto or two-drop person (an English/Irish mother and a black father). Was I, therefore, supposed to abandon the white half of my biological identity? Also, unlike some groups and individuals, I’m not advocating for preferential treatment or lifestyle laws to justify my existence.
I dedicate this site to America’s social outcasts: Straight, Somewhat Conservative, Light-Skinned, Mulatto (European/African) Men, but also to mixed people anywhere in the world.