Member-only story
Jesse and Herbert
In love, race ain’t no thang!
I love love! I’m a big believer in the power of love. I know it can transform lives. I’ve lived it. A Black man fell in love with a tiny motherless infant in 1971 and became my daddy.
I fell in love with a boy at 16 who broke my heart into a million pieces and this month marks 11 years of us being back together.
I get love.
But, not like my great-grandparents.
I thought I knew love against all odds. Mixed race girl, white boy with a bigoted father. Inconvenient meddling.
Please!
Let me tell you about some real lovebirds, Jesse and Herbert, my paternal great-grandparents.
Jesse, as you can see, what a white woman, a proud lass of Scottish extraction living in Nova Scotia. She was born in 1873.
And then there was Herbert, Herbert Reuben, my great grandfather, a Black man. The son of Benjamin Reuben and his wife Fanny, born in 1874 in Nova Scotia.
Jesse and Herbert married in 1891 and went on to create a family that included my grandfather, and later my daddy.
Think about that for a moment.
In honour of Black History Month, think…
