It took me d into my twe to come to realisation t I am ‘enoug exactly as I
WHEN Meghan Markle says “I do” to Prince Harry next month, she will single-handedly drag the royal family into the modern world.
Not only is she an American divorcee, which was enough for Edward VIII to have to abdicate when he fell in love with Wallis Simpson, she is also mixed race.
The third of our exclusive extracts from Harry & Meghan The Love Story, by Emily Herbert, reveals how life with a black mother and white father has made Meghan the woman for Harry...
The 1970s was a time of huge cultural change in the USA, with the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate and Ronald Reagan headed to the White House.
It was towards the end of that decade, that Doria Ragland, a yoga therapist and social worker, and Thomas W Markle, a director of photography, first met.
Meghan Markle’s mother is African American and her father is Caucasian. It was an issue for Meghan herself, aware that she was the product of two different ethnic backgrounds, she has spoken of being torn between them.
Doria’s roots have been traced as far back as 1881, when Meghan’s great-great grandfather, Jeremiah (Jerry) Ragland, was born in Clayton, Georgia. His mother, who was white, was called Texas “Texie” Hendrick, while his father, Steve Ragland, was probably black.
A genealogist discovered that Jeremiah was described in the 1920 census as “mulatto” – someone born to black and white parents.
Jeremiah went on to marry Claudie Ritchie, and the couple moved to Chattanooga, a pleasant and in places elegant city nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee.
Jeremiah owned his own tailoring shop, while Claudie worked as a maid at Miller’s Department Store, where black and white staff were kept separate and white customers were served by the latter only.
At that point, segregation existed in every aspect of life across the US.
Claudie died at the age of 44, while Jeremiah lived to 63. Life in a mixed-race family at the end of the 19th century would have been extremely difficult as racism was essentially enshrined in US law.
From 1877 to 1965, the year civil rights legislation was enacted, the “Jim
Crow” laws ensured that blacks were treated like second-clas they were forced to u different – and markedly facilities to whites. Blacks stay in the same hotels, same restaurants, or hav like the same opportu whites in the “land of the
And while the idea of a white couple was unthi many at the time, such clearly took place, within family as elsewhere.
Jerry and Claudie lived son, Steve, daughters teach Li c t WHEN Ceawlin Thynn, aka Viscount Weymouth and heir to the Marquess of Bath, married Emma Mcquiston in 2013, his mother is said to have made the deeply unpleasant remark: “Are you sure about what you’re doing to 400 years of bloodline?”
Like Meghan, Emma is of mixed parentage – her mother, Suzanna Mcquiston, who descri as “racist” and “ghastl and her father, the Nige Ladi Jadesimi, is black
Lady Bath, who is ac Hungarian, point-blank racist or using the lang to her.
That said, most of th