The Atlanta Journal constitution recently wrote about John and Betty, and afterward heard of several couples whose weddings took place even earlier, before Georgia reluctantly changed its law.
Joseph Carpenter and Sallie Mitchell were married on April 4, 1970 at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. Courtesy: carpenter family
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Carpenter Family
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Carpenter Family
Joseph and Sallie
Despite going to bed early, Sallie Mitchell, a school teacher, agreed to go to an Atlanta club with her friends. It was the late 1960s. The place was empty except for the owner and Joseph Carpenter, a Houston County teacher.
Joseph and Sallie danced. (She had to ask him.) The next night they went to a drive-in movie at the Starlight. The next weekend he came back with roses from his garden, two steaks and a bottle of Chianti from Houston County.
“I am a little country girl. I didn’t know how to cook a steak and he was a good cook so he just walked into my apartment and started cooking, ”said Sallie from the house they share on Lake Oconee. “We had steak and potatoes and salad and the Chianti wine and roses from his garden. It was very impressive and I had to see him again. “
The course of this true love did not go smoothly.
When a staff member found out that Joseph was dating a black woman, his superintendent in Houston asked him to drop out of school. Joseph’s father Frank Carpenter forbids marriage. None of his parents came to the ceremony.
Sallie’s parents, Henrietta and William Mitchell, were concerned, but not against, when Sallie spoke of a marriage to Joseph. They were concerned that the couple might face discrimination. “After they met Joe, they fell in love with him and it was fine.”
ExplorePhotos from the lives of two mixed couples
Joseph and Sallie were married on April 4, 1970 in St. Thomas Catholic Church in Decatur.
Both worked in Atlanta schools for decades. She has taught at CL Gideons Elementary School, Blair Village Elementary, Tull Water Elementary, and LJ Campbell Elementary. He has taught at Bass High School, Brown High School, and Northside High School, and was the assistant principal at Roosevelt High School.
He was called up for the Air Force reserves during the desert storm, but was not deployed abroad, but served in Idaho.
They have two children, Mitchell and Helki, who were born 16 months apart. The arrival of the little ones helped heal the tear in Joseph’s family, and his mother Helen came to Georgia to look after the children. Helen lived with Joseph and Sallie for 19 years.
Despite living in southeast Atlanta, they sent Helki and Mitchell to schools in Briar Vista and Druid Hills as part of the minority-to-majority program.
Helki, now Helki Pruitt, said: “I’ve learned how to navigate this black and white world.”
Joseph and Sallie learned new things from each other. She took him to tiny Woodland, Georgia (population 406) to visit her parents, and he learned how to pick butter beans and help a pig die.
She learned Italian cooking from Joseph and his mother Helen and how to enjoy fried clams and lobster.
They built a house on Lake Oconee in 1986 and retired there. Joseph, 81, developed Lou Gehrig’s disease a few years ago and is dependent on Sallie for many things.
But a photo of the two on Valentine’s Day shows the love in their eyes.
On Valentine’s Day 2021, Sallie and Joseph Carpenter will look back on 51 years of marriage. Courtesy: family
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Carpenter Family
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Carpenter Family
“We had our fights, our money problems, the same thing everyone else had,” said Sallie, 75. “He happened to be white and I happened to be black.” I don’t see it that differently from everyone else, except for the color. “
Nick and Gayle were married in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Church off the North Druid Hills. Courtesy of the Garin family
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Garin family
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Garin family
Nick and Gayle
In the spring of 1970, Nick Garin and Gayle Bowden, both students at Emory University, went to Ossabaw Island to retire for student leaders where they ignored each other.
They were thrown together on the way back to Atlanta when the Dean brought them both back to Emory. When Gayle heard “Moon River” sing on the long drive, he suddenly piqued Nick’s interest.
“She is beautiful; she has this incredible voice. She has everything to herself,” he thought.
She was under a similar spell: “It was spring. The magnolias were blooming. “
Both were student activists and fought against the Vietnam War. Nick, who grew up in Auburn, was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Council when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered and volunteered at the King House for the next two days.
Gayle grew up in Collier Heights, northwest Atlanta, and was a valedictorian at Harper High School.
They married young: she was in her sophomore year, he was older. When they announced the upcoming wedding, her parents, Charles and Diane Bowden, were “not very excited,” she said, but not against.
On Nick’s side: “My father (George Illichevsky Garin) basically disowned me. My mother (Mary Ann Garin) stayed with us. But it had a negative impact on their marriage. “
They applied for a marriage license in DeKalb County and encountered no opposition. “Nobody bothered us about it,” said Nick.
Most of her family came to the wedding. Hardly any of him came.
Their ceremony was held on September 5, 1970 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta near the North Druid Hills. As they entered the church, another bride and groom were leaving after celebrating an earlier ceremony. The groom was wrapped in a Confederate flag that was worn as a cloak.
It was a strange moment.
On their honeymoon, the two went to New York, where Nick was going to class, and Gayle had moved to Barnard.
On the way, they stayed at a friend’s house in Hendersonville, North Carolina, who told them not to wait for gas under any circumstances while they were in the area. “You’d better refuel and get through this region without stopping,” they were warned.
Nick graduated from law school and the two moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, where Nick worked as the assistant attorney general on consumer fraud and other issues. Gayle, a certified elementary school teacher, worked for nonprofit organizations.
Nick and Gayle moved to Poughkeepsie where they raised their three sons who are (from left) Scott Charles and Philip. Courtesy of the Garin family
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Garin family
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Garin family
They have three boys: Scott, Charles, and Philip, who all live in New York State.
Nick said they had some easy acceptance in New York State. Poughkeepsie is evenly split between races, he said, with a growing percentage of Hispanic residents. (The US Census Bureau registers the city’s population as 47% white and 37% black.) “There’s no response to us up here.”
Suspicion comes from strangeness, he said. “Only if you don’t know yourself. Once they get to know you, all that racist stuff melts away. “
