The Dream

When he enlisted in the Navy, Clark Council Hamilton, a fair-skinned, brown-eyed young fellow, listed himself as a white man. Last year, after he got out of the service, he went to Roanoke, Va., married a redheaded, 19-year-old white girl named Florence Hammond, whom he had met while she was selling popcorn at a local movie house. Florence's family were semiliterate Virginia dirt farmers. At first they welcomed Clark. But after a while his mother-in-law began to resent him--she still wanted Florence tied to her apron strings.

The young couple went off to Baltimore, got jobs and settled down. But the bride's mother began badgering the girl over the telephone. Finally she told her daughter a baleful tale: she had dreamed that Hamilton was a Negro and then she had gone to Russellville, Ala., found the boy's mother and verified her suspicions.

Hamilton insisted that he was white and that he had been born in California rather than Russellville (where records showed that a Clark Council Hamilton Jr., colored, had been born in 1928). His wife believed him, refused to listen to her mother's demands that she get a divorce. But her mother had a final weapon--she swore to a complaint against Hamilton.

He was arrested just before Christmas. He waived extradition, went back to Roanoke, was lodged in the white section of the segregated jail.

His wife got him a lawyer, swore that she still wanted him--black or white. But if he were proved to be a Negro (Virginia's definition: "every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood"), he would be guilty of miscegenation--a crime punishable by as much as five years in the penitentiary.

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