Open Hearts, Hidden Truths
Open Hearts, Hidden Truths is a new podcast where the raw meets the revelatory – secrets, realizations, and turning points that reshape who we become.
First-time and never-again experiences, in particular, compel us to evolve.
Through personal confessions and guest stories, we explore transformative shifts and uncover the hidden truths that connect us all.
Episodes released every other Tuesday.
Open Hearts, Hidden Truths
What if a Forbidden Romance Reshaped Your Life?
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My guest shares her story about a secret interracial romance that blossomed in the Deep South during the 1960s. When her family uncovered this relationship, it triggered a chain of events that challenged not only her love, but her sense of self.
Have you ever been involved in something society would consider scandalous?
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Intro
Speaker 1This is Shamron, and you're listening to Open Hearts, Hidden Truths. Annie Waxman has written a memoir about growing up as a white girl in the Jim Crow Sound and falling in love with a black classmate, a basketball player named James. In her book, The Accidental Rebel: My Story of Interracial Love and Loss, she writes, I was born in the 50s. My birthday put me smack in the middle of the tidal waves of social change that roared through the 1960s. The first half as a preteen. The second as a popular teenage cheerleader from a well-to-do family in a small town in Kentucky with a population of about 9,000 the year I was born. How would you describe your very early childhood growing up in Kentucky?
Speaker 2Pretty peaceful if you're talking about real early. I lived on a farm. And, you know, it was, it felt like it was peaceful. But there were starting to be, you know, issues when I was young with my dad and uh alcoholism and you know drinking a lot. So that did um fairly early on start being a difficulty in the family. Uh my mom was uh not from this country. She met my dad in the war and came over after World War II. So uh she was kind of thrown into this uh very small town and um did not really fit in. She was um German and you know it was after the war. So she tried to do everything she could to fit in and make sure that we girls were, you know, very polite and kind and mannerly and um so but she had some difficulties, you know, with my dad's drinking.
Speaker 1Now, your father did he move out when you were young?
Speaker 2Uh he did not um leave our home until um right before I was 16. But he was also, you know, hardly ever home as well. He was always working, he built a pretty successful uh business, so he was not home very much.
Speaker 1You mentioned being 16. This was right around the time that you met somebody.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, yes. It wasn't that I was a cheerleader and he was a basketball player, uh, and I was um, you know, popular and homecoming and involved in all of that, and um very, you know, nice girl. And um the problem was was he happened to be black, and it was, you know, 1969, and so that's not something that you did, and I knew I shouldn't do it, but I did it anyway. I met with him uh secretively, uh actually for most of our relationship was in secret until we were well into adulthood.
Forbidden Fruit
Speaker 1Do you think that that was part of the allure, the secrecy, forbidden fruit?
Speaker 2Um yes, I think somewhat. I I, you know, I on some level, I think I kind of, even though I knew my parents would be upset, um, I never thought that they would react quite the way that they did. It was just um I I was almost, I think, getting back at my dad for never being around or never being home. Uh, you know, it was the 50s and 60s. It was spare the rod, spoil the child. I mean, you know, we were whipped and, you know, and and that was very common in that time in Kentucky. And um I think on some level I possibly wanted to kind of get back at him. He was never at any of the recitals, I was in dance and never at any of the games. And um, I think on some level, I wanted to get back at him. And I think that was an allure, and also it was just forbidden. And I didn't even tell my best friend, so I must have thought and known that I was doing something that could be scandalous, let's say, in the small town that I lived in.
Speaker 1Do you remember the first moment that you met James?
Speaker 2Well, um, you know, in 1963, the high school, you know, formed together, and that's when the black kids came to school with us. And um, and I met him then, but I I knew of him because of cheerleading, because he was a pretty, he was one of the star basketball players. So that I knew him and of him, but you know, you didn't really, uh back then, you didn't really talk to the kids. I mean, the black kids. I mean, everybody was kind of separate in school, even like our movie theater in town had a side door where the blacks would have to go up to be sit in the balcony to watch a movie. So this was kind of like, you know, the way I grew up. So um, you know, you didn't really, maybe in class you might talk a little bit, or you know, walking in the halls between classes. I was always, you know, super friendly and said hello to everybody. But that was about as far as it went. You didn't uh go much further. You certainly didn't get together with someone that was black or hang out or become friends, let's say.
Speaker 1So how did things progress then? How did this this uh affair begin?
Call Me
Speaker 2Well, I um funny enough, uh, you know, I had my own telephone on the wall. I mean, that was when, you know, you had the telephones with the big long lines, and you could pull them into your room and shut the door. Uh and I had my own line, and um uh a black guy that I had seen at the drugstore called me. I mean, you know, and it was a phone book, and your phone number was in the phone book. And um, I kind of chatted and talked to him and it kind of got around that um that I talked to black guys. So um, so James in the book, um, the basketball player ultimately um called me and we started talking, and he asked if he could call again, and I said yes, and um it just you know evolved, and um we decided to meet each other and we met each other in the cemetery because the black area of town uh came up to where the end of the cemetery was. So I would lie to my parents and say I was going to the Dairy Queen and get a whatever, you know, ice cream cone. But I would go to the cemetery to the very back, and he would be coming through the field and he would meet me, and we would sit in the car and talk, and you know, so it just sort of evolved, it just started rolling, and there was no stopping it.
Speaker 1And there's always something really sexy about doing something forbidden. Yes, isn't there?
Speaker 2Yes, yes, exactly. I would say you're exactly right.
Speaker 1And how long did this continue on sneaking around?
Speaker 2Till I was uh 26.
Speaker 126?
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Okay, let's go back though before uh let's go back before you graduated.
Speaker 2Okay, all right. Uh well I was um uh on July 26, 1969, uh was the day that I remember 57 years later, and it was the day that my father caught me. There were rumors in the town, the small town, that I was seeing him. And um and I denied them to my best friend and all the cheerleaders, and I said, it's not true, it's not true, uh, but it was true. And um I was uh caught with him. My father had uh cars, father was pretty powerful, and he had the police um uh cars um following me, and they followed me into um the area, the black area at that time, which was called Bucktown, which is a horrible name, but that's what's what it called. It was called, and it was called that all of my life when I was young. And um my father caught me in a in a house with him, and that was the day that all the shit went down. Now, my father also was uh drunk uh too, uh, in a rage, actually. What happened?
Speaker 1What happened when he caught you?
The Incident
Speaker 2Uh he came up to the to the door of this house, and they one of the guys ran and said, you know, your father's outside, your father's outside, and I couldn't believe it. And uh there was banging on the door, and so I told James to run out the back door and um to get away as fast as he could. And I went to the door, and um my father grabbed me and threw me down these concrete steps, and then the woman that he was having an affair with that was with him, uh, spit on me. And then I was thrown into my dad's car and taken home, um, which was only, you know, five minutes away, small town. And um he um and my mother ran out of the house and said, What's going on? And then my father yelled, she's been with a n-word. And so they got me in the house, and I don't know, do you want me? I I'm not sure how much you want me to say, but it was whatever you're comfortable sharing. All right, okay. So um they got me in the house, my mother's screaming, and my older sister is there, and my younger sister, and they put my younger sister in the bedroom and told her to stay in there, and um, she was quite a bit younger, and um my father uh was hitting me and um and he and uh it was chaotic, it was truly chaotic, and um I was he asked me if I had slept with him. You know, I was very fearful at this point, and you know, I was never really was a very good girl, I always really did what I was supposed to do, and I said yes, which I had, in the car with him in the cemetery, which I had never been with anyone before. And um, my father started choking me, and my older sister and my mom were pulling him off of me, and uh, he had his gun, and um they said run, so I ran out the front door into the backyard of the neighbor, and a shot went off. Not did not hit me, but there was a shot that went off, and so I was hiding in the neighbor's backyard, and then honestly, I can't quite remember if my sister ran after me, or I can't quite remember that, but I ended up back at the house and the police were there, so the police were there, and all of a sudden, um relatives started coming and ministers and came in the house and told me that I had shamed the family in the town. I remember my uncle said, you know, how could you have done this to our family? And a minister was there, and then the cops took my father's guns because he had a lot of guns. We had a gun closet actually. Um, but he was in the military, and you know, it was the country, you know, it was the country. I mean, people had guns, you know, back then. Uh they do now as well. But so um I um uh, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm kind of in shock, um, not really able to talk to anybody or function really on any level. Um my mother is crying. Um there are people, we lived in a cul-de-sac, and there was like um a line of cars, probably 50 cars or more driving by our house very slowly and going up to the end and turning around and coming back. There were rumors that he had killed me and my body was in the funeral home. Uh then um people left. I recall things calmed down a little bit. My father and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table, and I was just kind of sitting in the couch, kind of comatosed, really. And uh my father said he had to leave for a few minutes. And uh my my mother thought my father was gonna go and kill himself. So she got in her car and followed him and ultimately found him with his girlfriend that had spit on me. And my mother rammed her car into that woman's car and drove home and came in the kitchen crying and had a knife and was gonna slit her wrists. Uh so all of this, you know, chaotic to say the least. Yeah, right, to say the least, was going on. So um it's probably one in the morning or something, and I'm in my bed, and my father comes in the room, and he said, get up and get your bulletin board and come in the backyard. And I get up and I have my bulletin board, which had all of my cheerleading pictures that were in the paper, pictures of the basketball team, the basketball player I was with, you know, high school stuff, you know, that you like to keep. And um I had the bulletin board, and he had built a fire in the grill, and I had to burn those pictures one by one.
Speaker 1As though he could erase your past.
Where Are You Taking Me?
Speaker 2I yes, yes, uh, yes. And the next morning they tell me that they want me to um pack up a few things because they wanna they they've talked to the doctor and they think that I should go to the hospital. Um They say why because I was almost comatose. I was not functioning. I had been through all this trauma, had been up all night, and so somebody talked to my father's doctor and said, let's get her to the hospital. So I threw some stuff in a bag and I went with my mom and dad to the next big town, to the hospital, not in our town. And we get out of the car, and on some level, I was kind of relieved because I could just be away from them, be away from the house. And we get out and we go up in the elevator, and we get off of the elevator, and there's a door there with bars on it, and you have to ring a bell. And I looked at them and I said, Where are you taking me? And it was the psychiatric ward.
Speaker 1How long were you there in that ward?
Speaker 2Uh, a week.
Speaker 1And did they have you medicated?
Speaker 2Yes, yes, I was very drugged. I had a room with a woman. I had there in my room, we had twin beds. There was a woman, now this was 1969. Okay. Um, there was a woman in there that had just butchered her husband. Uh, there was a one one woman that was just psychotic, just talking over and over and over and over and over again, just saying the same words. And there was this young alcoholic girl that was in there. And then I was in there for being with a black guy. So I was medicated. I mean, we ate on card tables in a group room. You know, I imagine it was kind of like what a Valium or an Atavan or something would be now, you know. I I don't really know.
Speaker 1Could you take me back into your into your state of mind? Do you recall what you were thinking, what you were feeling throughout all that?
Speaker 2Yes, I was feeling hate for my parents. I hated them. And I remember my them, my father saying before they left the psychiatric ward, you know, we're doing this because we love you. And I'll never forget that. And I just hated them. I hated them.
Speaker 1Do you remember feeling hopeless? You didn't know what was going on. I'm sure you didn't know how long you were going to be there.
Speaker 2No, I I didn't have any idea what was going on. Now, my best friend tells me that she came to visit me and they would not let her in. But I don't remember, I mean, I was really out of it pretty much the whole time I was there. So then I got out and they picked me up and we drove home. And I do remember I was still drugged a bit. And um the cheerleader, my best friend, who was a cheerleader, and she came over and And got my pom-poms and my jacket and everything because I was kicked off the squad. Um, so I couldn't be a cheerleader anymore. And I'd been a cheerleader since I was in eighth grade.
Speaker 1So the school was busy judging you as well and condemning you.
Speaker 2Oh, oh yeah. The I mean uh the whole town. I mean, you know, you have to understand, you know, the the mentality in the 50s and 60s. It was kind of like the family code was, you know, what would the neighbors think? You know, you kept your problems at home. There were a lot of alcoholic fathers around in that in that time. I remember a lot of them, but you didn't, you didn't talk about it. You just, it was not something spoken about. And you know, and you know, I've got to tell you, growing up, we were not allowed to talk negatively about anyone. We were not allowed to say anything um remotely racist, or you know, we were brought up to be ladies, and so you know, it just was just all very confusing.
Speaker 1But at this point, then you're 16 and you're the you're the town pariah.
Speaker 2Yes, yes.
Speaker 1Now they ship off this so-called pariah, right? They ship you off?
Speaker 2Yes, right, to a Catholic boarding school for for a girls, bad girls.
Speaker 1For problem children.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, but may only girls. This was only girls, this boarding school. It was in North Carolina.
Speaker 1But you resumed things with James, even though you were away, you stopped seeing him, you resumed your relationship.
Speaker 2Right, right. Well, you know what? I gotta tell you, it was like, okay, you think? So what happens in a situation like this is that you can either lose yourself emotionally, or you can choose to be strong and tough. And I went that way. So I was like, huh, you think? All right, I'll show you, we'll prove to you that this was meant to be, and so it became almost a crusade of, you know, we're gonna make it work, it's gonna last forever, we'll show you, we'll show the town, we'll show society, basically. And I think that if my parents would have just let me be with this guy, I would have found out very early on that we should have never been together, mainly because we weren't suited for each other.
Speaker 1That just makes you want it even more, the the forbidden fruit and sticking up a middle finger to everybody who condemned you.
Speaker 2Exactly. Yes, exactly.
Picking Up Where We Left Off
Speaker 1So at this point, it's around 1970.
Speaker 2Yes, I went to college, and he went to college. We were both at different colleges in the same state. We wrote letters back then, uh, you know, and there was like uh one phone in the hallway at the dorm. I mean, you know, it was early on, and um so I we resumed the relationship. He asked if he could write me, and then I used to go up and see him and hide and and it was very secret relationship, and I would go oh, so daringly, I would get rods to his school on the weekend, and it was in the same town where my father lived, and I would sneak in the dorm and I would stay there on the weekend with him. I mean, I was very daring then at that point. Um, nobody was gonna stop me.
Speaker 1You were daring up until 26, you said you were still sneaking around.
Speaker 2Yes, until I told them that I was with him. Because, you know, we ultimately got married. I was it was at the point where my mom and they were my parents were divorced. Okay, they were separated. And um I my mother would come out to visit, so James would have to leave. He'd have to go stay with a friend because here we are, 26 years old, and they still don't know that I'm with him. And I got so sick of lying, and it wasn't, it just wasn't good for me anymore. All I've did all my life, it felt like, was being that being in secrecy and lying and making up stories, and it wasn't fair for him to have to leave our home. And it just was like, why am I still doing this? So I ended up telling them, and my mother didn't speak to me for about eight months, I guess. And my father, shockingly, said, Okay, well, all right. So when are you getting married? And ultimately that ball started rolling because my father was like that, and uh it just it's crazy how it all just kind of evolved.
About-face
Speaker 1This is the part in the book where I was I was very confused.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Your father did this 180 that I had a hard time wrapping my head around.
Speaker 2Yes, yes.
Speaker 1Can you explain that at all? Did it make sense to you?
Speaker 2Well, I'll tell you. My father um ended up, the woman that spit on me, he ended up marrying, and she was 17 years younger than him, and she, believe it or not, ultimately made him more accepting of different people, different colors. And because she actually became pretty powerful herself. Um, and I can't say too much about this uh because um uh you know uh these a lot of these people don't know that I've written this book. So without going without going into too much of the detail, it's because of his it's because of his his new wife, you thought I think that she because she ended up being involved with more people because of the position she was in. And I I just I think that my dad kind of thought, wow, if she's been doing this for this is what, you know, six like ten years, I maybe just need to let this go. I mean, it was odd, but it changed and he was um um became friends with a young Jewish guy and everything that it was kind of in the business, and he just evolved, you know. I have to tell you, I just don't know for sure because we never ever talked about what happened that day, except one time my dad, and I was in my 50s, and we were at his house in Kentucky, and he looked at me and he said, You know, that should have never happened like that. And I was shocked, and I looked at him, and I said, Yeah, I know it shouldn't have. That was the only thing my whole life that was ever mentioned about July 26, 1969. My mother, nothing, it was like it never happened. So all these years I'm holding all this in and I'm letting it go because I want my family to be together. I it was the way I was raised. I just forgave everybody. It was that day in time, you know, he was drinking. I mean, you know, my mom, you know, was European and didn't fit in, and I just, you know, I just let everybody off the hook. And that's why I've been in therapy 16 years and still am, because I just it was just suppressed and hidden in me for all those years.
Speaker 1Did your father ever get sober?
The Past Repeats
Speaker 2Yes, he did. Yes, he got sober. He was sober for 12 years. My father suffered also from depression, and he had had like eight shock treatments um when I was um in college. Uh, and yes, he did get sober. He was sober for 12 years, and then he started drinking again, and then he got and then he was sober the rest of his life. So, yes, he did. He changed, and that's why no people can change. They have the ability to change if they want to.
Speaker 1James, then things did not go so well, did they?
Speaker 2No, no, because I married, I married my father. I married a mean alcoholic and a philander. You repeated the pattern then. Absolutely, absolutely. That's what I knew. I mean, it's a very, it's a common codependent story. And like I said, you know, I think if if the mantra wasn't, you know, we'll show them, we will make it. If I maybe hadn't had that obsession that everything that happened to me and us, we were going to prove that, you know, we were it, we were right, they were wrong. I think if I would have allowed myself to not, you know, go in that direction, it's possible I would have known much sooner what I was really getting myself into.
Speaker 1Well, it was you against the world.
Speaker 2Exactly. That was it. Both of us. And um, and I've got to tell you, I'm I have a lot of empathy for what he went through. He was thrown into this situation with this white chick that just started rolling and there was no way out. And I think I he was shut down. I I I think he never felt comfortable uh with us as an interracial cuff couple, even moving to this huge city that I'm in. I I have a lot of empathy for what he went through. And he did not treat me nice either.
Speaker 1You were married for a few years and then you divorced?
Speaker 2We were married for actually we lived together for probably six years and got married, and we were divorced two years later.
Speaker 1If you could go back and give your younger self advice, that 16-year-old girl, what would you tell her?
Speaker 2Gosh, you know, I I I at that time um there was so much going on. There was racial tension, you know, there was uh all the secrecy that was happening, uh, my identity, who I really was. I was so sweet and popular and fun and gosh, you know, that I Shamron, I don't know what I would tell myself because it just was what it was, and I'm not sure I could have told myself anything at that time and changed anything.
Speaker 1Do you look back at that younger self and feel compassion and empathy?
Speaker 2Oh, yes, absolutely, yes, yes, compassion, empathy. Um sad, actually. Do you want to hold her and tell her it's going to be okay? Yes, yes, and and I believe that I've accomplished that through all of my therapy as well. I'm kind of a tough ass. Um, I'm very strong individual. I find that I don't have a lot of tolerance for for stupidity or or any racist comments or, you know, I'm I'm very strong. It toughened me. It really toughened me and maybe a little too much, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1How do you see your story? How would you frame your story looking back?
Speaker 2Well, you know, I I wasn't really an activist. I mean, I, you know, I didn't think about societal issues at that time, and you know, and I didn't think too much about social issues. I mean, when Martin Luther King was shot, where there was a big fight in the high school, I mean, I remember that, and I remember it was a big deal, and everybody was concerned, and there were parents that were glad, and there were kids that were glad he was dead, and there were other ones that were shocked, and I mean, I I mean, I just I didn't set out to be a rebel, that wasn't who I was. It all happened by accident. That girl started having a real purpose in her life at a very young age, and I think I missed out a little bit, like some of my other friends that I'm still friends with in Kentucky, cheerleader friends that were still very close. I think I kind of missed out on what they had and more calm family life. And um, but it made me who I am today. So can I say I regret it? No, but I often wonder what it would have been like and who I would be if it had never happened.
Family's Reaction
Speaker 1How did your family react to your book?
Speaker 2Oh, well, first of all, I didn't write the book until my both of my parents had passed. So I didn't, I was not gonna write this book if either one of them were alive. My sisters even had said, oh, yeah, you know, well, you can't write it till mom and dad are gone. And you know what? They are not happy that I wrote the book. They have not read the book. My older sister had said she doesn't believe in speaking ill of the dead, and my younger sister does not even acknowledge that it's been written really. I might make a comment about it. She never says a word. My older sister never says a word. So I've kind of done something that they're not happy with. Unfortunately, there are people I cannot tell about this book that I'd like to read the book because I'm afraid that my sisters would get upset. You changed the names, though, of course. Yes, I changed all the names. Every name. My name is a pen name, but it doesn't matter. There are people, I will tell you, that have read the book in that small town that have contacted me. And so they knew it was me because it was a huge scandal. So I've had some reach out to me, and then I've had some make really um not so nice comments.
Speaker 1Do you care anymore? Do you care what they say?
Speaker 2No, I do not care. I do not care.
Speaker 1Where can I purchase your book?
Speaker 2It's on Amazon, it's also on um, it's an Audible, it's a Kindle, it's a paperback and a hardback, and it's also at Barnes and Noble, or you can order at any other any other bookstores.
Speaker 1What began as a love story evolved into a path of self-discovery and self-love. What are you feeling? Talk to me.
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