302 - The Rhinelander Scandal

Today's podcast is about a divorce case in New York that took place 100 years ago. Kip Rhinelander, the heir to a prominent New York Family, secretly married Alice Jones, a working class girl.  While this would normally draw the ire of his family the situation became national news when rumors began to spread that the new bride was "colored" and not "white".  This kicked off a media firestorm that led to a trial with the Rhinelander family attempting to annul the marriage on the grounds of Alice having fraudulently misrepresented herself as "white" to Kip.  The trail came at the height of the eugenics movement and the creation of anti-miscegenation laws like Virginia's Racial Integrity Act that prevented interracial marriages, making the trial national news across the country.