Races: A Marriage of Enlightenment

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Colliding Color Blurs. How much history? No one could say, least of all the principals. Historian Arnold Toynbee once mused that world peace could come from only two sources: world government or racial amalgamation. Which will take longer remains to be seen, and some experts predict a ten-century wait before the colors blend in the U.S. alone (see ESSAY).

Clearly, Peggy and Guy Smith's example will not hasten that day by any appreciable degree. It is unlikely that they care. Nonetheless, their marriage will doubtless be long remembered as a benchmark in the troubled history of race relations in the U.S.

The father of the groom, for one, believes that the fact Peggy and Guy could marry with some prospect for happiness "is an outgrowth of 20th century enlightenment. There is a oneness in the world and a general feeling of equality of man." Even after the bitter summer of 1967, in which black and white collided so often and recklessly, the brave and happy marriage of Peggy Rusk and Guy Smith was a reminder to Americans that the blurred, contending forces of violence are made up after all of individuals capable of the closest human union, regardless of politics, shibboleths and chauvinism—black or white.