Jake and Mary Jacobs celebrated their 70 years of beautiful marriage last year, but they had to overcome many challenges to get to this momentous milestone.
Mary, a white woman, and Jake, a black man, met in 1940s Britain. At the time, Jake was one of the few black guys residing in a city.
Even though Mary easily left, she was deeply in love and would do whatever it took to be with her partner, even if it meant defying her father’s desires.
When I told my father I was getting married to Jake, he said, “If I married Jake, I would never set foot in this house again.”
Mary, Jacobs, and JakeIn April 1948
The Handcrafted House Published on September 30, 2019, Monday
The two met at the same technical school where Jake was training for the Air Force after coming from Trinidad during the war, and Mary was taking typing and shorthand classes.
Mary, who was at the time residing in Lancashire, struck up a conversation with Jake and was impressed by his grasp of Shakespeare.
While out having a picnic with her friend, Mary noticed a woman walking by observing him and his partner. The mother, startled to see two English girls conversing to black guys, told her father about Mary. Mary’s father forbade her from ever meeting him again after being shocked.
When Jake returned to Trinidad, they communicated, and a few years later, he moved to the UK in pursuit of a better earning job.
Mary was asked to marry Jake when she was nineteen. She agreed, but after telling her family, they disowned her.
“I only brought one small suitcase with me when I left.” Our 1948 registrar office wedding was attended by no family members.
Mary didn’t know that other people in society felt the same way her father did when he saw her thinking about being married to a black man.
“During the first years of our marriage in Birmingham, I cried every day and ate very little,” the speaker remarked. We were homeless, no one talked to us, and finding a place to live was difficult since no one would rent to a black man.
People would point at them as they strolled down the street together, Mary told the Daily Mail.
The couple was thrilled to be expecting a child when Mary found out she was pregnant, but the baby was stillborn at eight months.
The woman said, “It broke my heart, and we never had any more children.” My stress level is unrelated to this.
When Mary was engaged as a teacher and later promoted to assistant principle at a British school, and Jake was employed by the Post Office, their circumstances did improve. They became friends, but Mary claimed that before she could even introduce them to others, she had to reveal to them that her husband was black.
“My father never did approve of Jake, even though by the time he passed away when I was thirty, we had made up,” she went on.
Mary,84, and Jake,89, who reside in the little town of Solihull, south of Birmingham, recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.
Even while Jake says he doesn’t regret anything, he also points out that young Black children today have no concept what it was like for him to grow up in 1940s Britain.
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“I am abused every single day.”Every day after I got to the UK, I was mistreated. A man once claimed, “I wanted to see if the dirt would come off,” as he put his hands on my neck as I was crossing a bus.
“And it wasn’t considered safe for a Black man to be in an office with all the White girls back then, so you couldn’t work in an office.”
Despite the difficulties, discrimination, and abuse, the pair is still madly in love and has no regrets about being married after almost 70 years of joyful marriage.
They are a huge source of inspiration, so perhaps