Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read this book.
This book was quite thought provoking. I can tell that a lot of research went into the project.

A book that covers racism, sexism, and classism—should be a must-read for all who want to understand American history better. It helped me piece together how our nation’s shameful history of slavery and racism continued well after the Emancipation Proclamation through subtle and not-so-subtle legal mechanisms.

Most of us have heard of the Loving case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in the US. Schumaker focuses on legal records in the state of Mississippi between the civil war and the Loving case, to tease out the history of the state's efforts to block such marriages and the apparent motivations at work. While the white power structure in the state made a lot of noise about the purity of the races, the knots into which they tied themselves over this issue for a century make it clear there was more going on.

Schumaker writes about the actual couples who were prosecuted by the state for their interracial relationships, the content of the evidence presented, and the disposition of each case (where it is possible, as some records have been destroyed by fire). In almost all cases, the cases involved a black woman and a white man, because honestly any couples that were the opposite never made it to court due to the law of lynching. In all of these cases, the couples didn't take their prosecution lying down, but hired lawyers, filed appeals, and in surprisingly few cases left the state. Some actually prevailed, because the laws were so sloppily written and because the white men writing the laws knew the races hadn't been separate in this manner - white men having children with the women they enslaved was common knowledge and they wanted to be sure laws were not written that would catch themselves due to perhaps having a black ancestor. They tied themselves in knots trying to establish that a given couple should be prosecuted due to the wife having a black ancestor - everyone brought testimony about whether that ancestor was really black, or Mexican, or ?? - everyone was so certain they could tell when a person had 1/8 black ancestry just by looking, but then they disagreed about whether a person who died when they were a small child looked black to them.

An interesting series of chapters focused on immigrant Eastern European Jewish men and Italian men who married black or mixed women, and how antisemitism and anti-catholicism played into the prosecutions. Catholic churches, especially on the western side of Mississippi near New Orleans, were less reluctant to marry interracial couples, but that didn't save them from prosecution.

The law was a constantly changing and ambiguous set of poorly written assertions on whether a particular marriage would be allowed, and whether people could be prosecuted for marrying vs. not marrying and just living together, which varied over time. Rhetoric about the maintenance of the races as "pure" papered over the complete absence of any such purity among the actual people of the state. The terms 'adultery' and 'incest' were used in early laws, which added to the confusion because the terms didn't apply to the couples who were prosecuted.

Schumaker demonstrates over and over that the true goal of this slurry of state laws and prosecutions was to preserve property in white hands. When a white man with property died, everyone immediately set about finding a way to avoid giving his property to his mixed race children and to find white relatives who ought to have it instead. The prevention of wealth transfer to black people was the true reason for making such a fuss over interracial marriages, at least in Mississippi. Despite all the noise made by racists about "our daughters" taking up with black men, in fact the ones "taking up" across the color line were white men; the law did not want to go so far as to explicitly criminalize that, because it was a prerogative white men had exercised for centuries. However, when they actually wanted to marry a black woman and pass their property to the children they had together, the state wanted to get involved to prevent it.

This gracefully written book brings to life the actual human beings caught up in this mess. It's an important addition to the full history of racism in the US and of the "wealth gap."

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.

Tangled Fortunes is a thought-provoking and thoroughly-researched tome that provides a significant addition to the historical record. Dispelling myths and legends regarding the status of interracial marriage in the South, Schumaker provides an alternative thesis to the topic. The main argument is that interracial relationships and marriages continued despite the increase in prohibitive laws during the Jim Crow era. This legislation served to protect white wealth rather than maintain “white racial purity” and supremacy. This topic deserves both careful scrutiny and humanization of the persons it impacted and Schumaker skillfully strikes that balance. Each chapter looks in depth at one particular couple that exemplifies the subject of the chapter. For example, in looking at the “one-drop rule,” readers are introduced to Antonio and Clara. This method made the inclusion of legislation, census records, and data very accessible and engaging.

This book is primarily an exploration of interracial marriage, as well as laws and legislation, particularly in the state of Mississippi. There’s a broader discussion of the laws in the Southern United States, and of legal status of Black people as it concerned marriage and property ownership. It also deals with matters of inheritance and succession, primarily in cases where a white enslaver would have relations with a Black woman or girl he owned to produce (usually) several children, and he did this with multiple women he owned in addition to the white family he had with his wife. These situations sometimes caused disputes where the white children would contest the mixed-race children and try to cut them out of wills or legal inheritances or anything that would financially benefit them. The author provides other examples as well.

In addition, the author primarily presents each chapter as a kind of case study of marriages and unions that took place in specific circumstances.

I DNF’d this at 16% in. I really liked the topic and was excited to read this book but I got lost with all the names of the couples. I think there could have been a bit more development of who these people were. The legal issues were supposed to be the focus but, I think this book would have been better served had the author provided some more background on the couples. Often names were just thrown out with little to no context. Pulling the reader in by providing more details on the couples would provide a more solid connection to the human aspect of the topic. This issue impacted people, seriously impacted their lives but the reader is left wondering who these people were and how these issues really impacted them.