They’re not big on radio or television talk show episodes that center on interracial love affairs, both believing that “each relationship is in and of itself.” Yet one cannot help but learn the story of Associated Content writer Mike Thompson, 52 and his wife, Denise, 57 and not wonder how the racial divide that still exists in neighborhoods, towns and cities across the country has impacted their marriage of 26 years. An interracial couple living in the still very segregated city of Saginaw, Michigan, they have managed to keep love’s flames burning brighter and longer than many couples who are of the same racial and ethnic background.
In his December 2007 article entitled, “The Songs of My Very Best Christmas,” Mike shared the nostalgic story of his first Christmas with his then fiancée, Denise Culpepper, and his soon-to-be in-laws. The occasion was a memorable one, filled with soulful music, a delectable feast and a warm exchange of love and fellowship that would resonate with Mike for years to come. Deeply touched by this story, I contacted Mike and Denise and asked if they would be willing to let me interview them. Fortunately, they consented.
Opposite Sides of the Tracks
Having been raised on opposite sides of Saginaw – Mike on the west or “White” side of town and Denise on the “Black” east side – it seemed unlikely that the two would ever have an opportunity to meet. Yet Mike’s involvement in community activism had led him several years prior to the very side of town on which his future sweetheart lived with her family. Though they would not formally meet until five years after he began working in Denise’s community, it was an encounter worth waiting for. Today, they chuckle as they recall the circumstances that first brought them together back in 1980.
“I remember when I first met Michael,” Denise recounted. “I was on the porch at my girlfriend’s house. Michael was carrying papers that said, ‘Attend this neighborhood meeting.’ I thought to myself, what is this White man doing over here with all of us…. Black people? And so I said to him, ‘What does this meeting consist of?’ Really I couldn’t have cared less about the subject at that point; I was just interested in him.”
Mike was eager to tell his side of the story. “It’s funny because the meeting ‘consisted of’ pushing the City Council to start picking up the trash every week again. They had made it every two weeks. This was the start of the double whammy – the auto industry dying here at the same time Reagan was ready to get into his cutbacks. So we can tell people, if not for trash, we may never have met!”
“The other coincidence was that since this was such a hot issue, I made 500 copies to pass out on that Sunday to try to get new members,” Mike continued. “When I got to the last street – Third Street – it was almost dark and I thought about calling it a day. If I had not decided to just finish up that one last street, who knows?”
Mike’s decision to even take the assignment that led him to Denise’s neighborhood was one that led his family to fear for his safety. “My father passed away suddenly four years before I met Denise, but he was still alive when I was assigned as a volunteer to work in the virtually all-Black neighborhood where I later encountered her. Both of my parents were concerned about my decision to take this assignment, given that it was only 8 years after the Detroit riots of 1967, but both were supportive of me.”
Readers might suspect that, having lived on opposite sides of the tracks so to speak, neither Mike nor Denise had ever been involved with a person of a different race. While this was the case for Denise, it was not so for Mike. “I went steady two years with a young lady from the same neighborhood as Denise, and we were close, but there was no sexual relationship because of her religious beliefs. These years were 1977 and 1978.”
Denise recalled her experience. “I knew friends of all races, in large part because I worked in bartending, but I had not dated outside of my race. When Michael came along, I did not care what color he was,” she said.
Remembering her close friend’s reaction when she first showed interest in Mike, Denise added, “Iyckee, my friend, she said, ‘You aren’t really looking at that White man, are you?’ But I had just been robbed where I lived in the projects – I had the nicest apartment in the projects, inside and out – and the two young guys who had robbed me, I had helped to take care of them. I had moved back into my mother’s house and really did not want to go anywhere. Now the one person who had first gotten me out was my best friend, James Mixom. We were friends, but we never did anything like that, you know, never even thought about it – we were friends. But when Michael came along that day, I just told Iyckee, ‘I don’t care what color, I’m just looking for a man!'”
Integrating Families
As their courtship began to blossom into true love, Mike and Denise had each other’s families to get used to. Although they reported that the family members they were closest to did not have any strong racial biases, Denise did note that her father was not happy about her choice of a mate.
“My family was accepting of people of other races, and they have treated Michael in this way, and of course Michael feels this way in turn. The exception was my father, who was separated in large part from my family, but we as the children still communicated with him to various degrees. My father did not want me to marry Michael and did not attend our wedding.”
Rather than be put off by his father-in-law’s disapproval, Mike empathized. If I had been born in Columbus, Georgia, as both of Denise’s parents were, and then if I had faced Saginaw’s northern Jim Crow, I very well may have felt as her father did. I simply told him I would do my best for his daughter. He did not seem mean-spirited or hateful; he was a product of his experiences.”
Denise too reported receiving a lackluster welcome from a member of Mike’s family – his uncle. “As Black people, sometimes we can just sense things. I could tell right from the get-go that Michael’s Uncle John was prejudiced, but Michael kept saying, ‘No, no.'”
“I did not say he was or was not [prejudiced],” Mike corrected. Only that when he failed to acknowledge you at the Christmas Eve party way back when, he was extremely hard of hearing.
In his article, “The Songs of My Very Best Christmas,” Mike mentioned that Denise had been invited to his family’s house during that first Christmas that they shared together, but she had reservations about going.
“I was just scared a little bit, especially because so many different relatives were over there, not just immediate family.” Denise recalled. “I really didn’t know what to expect. And then when I finally went a couple years later…I said right to him, ‘Uncle John, how are you doing?’ Michael tried to say, well, maybe he didn’t hear me, but I knew better. I got to where I would rather go over in the summer when there were cookouts – when we were all spread out instead of all tight together up in that house.”
Despite the relative in each of their families who was less-than-enthusiastic about their interracial union, Mike and Denise report that overall, racial hatred has not been characteristic of either of their families.
“I can tell Michael’s family was not hatefully prejudiced,” Denise stated “because he never has said a wrong word in that regard, not once. You will see other white men who get in these mixed relationships, and they seem to feel this allows them to try to act black or to use the words or whatever. But Michael has always just been Michael.”
“My own family was political in no way, lived a segregated existence and seemed not to think about racial matters,” Mike commented. “On the other hand, there were no slurs in our home and no feeling of being better. Both of my parents were humble.”
Mike recalled the time when he professed his love for Denise to his mother and expressed his intentions to marry her. “When I spoke with my mother, I told her that I looked at it like this: ‘Denise has many qualities. First, she loves to decorate and turn a house into a home. Second, she agrees with you that I should dress better and wear a tie sometimes, so that should make you happy, Mom. Third, she is so much like you; she is modest and always wants to help the next person. And then another of her qualities, Mother, is that Dee is a Black person. She is a woman with many qualities, and one of those qualities is that she is Black, as opposed to being a Black woman.’ This is what I told my Mother, and she did seem to understand and grow from that.
Mike added that his mother seemed to become more vocal about race-related matters as she aged. During her senior citizen years, my mother would speak up if she heard biased or prejudiced comments or slurs, which took much courage on her part, given her shy nature.
“It took time, but I really did come to love Michael’s mother,” said Denise. She was just the sweetest little thing.”
Mike expressed similar sentiments about Denise’s mother, although he admits that there were things he wanted to talk to her about but never did. “Dee’s Mom would call me ‘Sugar’. Sometimes I wanted to ask things, such as ‘what was it like growing up down in Columbus, Georgia?’ or ‘what was Saginaw like when you got here?’ But it never seemed right to do so. With the other neighbors who were in the neighborhood group that we created, this seemed okay after I had known them for several years, but not within the family.”
Mike’s mother passed away in October of 2004, and Denise’s died just three months later in January of 2005.
Love Perseveres
Today, the love that Mike and Denise shares continues to thrive and they enjoy a quality of life with friends and family that may seem hard to come by in Saginaw, which still has quite a ways to go on a number of different levels.
Detroit, Pontiac, Flint and Saginaw often are rated among the 10 poorest cities in the United States, and also among the 10 most segregated,” said Mike. “Both Dee and myself have mixed groups of friends. More people nowadays seem to have friends or at least acquaintances of a different hue, so that is good, but the racial politics seems never to change and in many ways it becomes worse. One example is that school districts since the middle 1990s have been allowed to accept pupils from other districts, through an open enrollment reform. The two districts near Saginaw that have chosen not to open their borders are the two most white segregated, affluent districts.”
Denise shared her own thoughts on the racial segregation that exists in Saginaw. “Yes, Saginaw is very segregated, but we happen to make our home in one of the most integrated areas, and the neighbors who are friends come from all of the races. Race relations are what a person makes of them.”
On the home front, Mike and Denise still enjoy a rich family life. They have seven grandchildren by Denise’s son Robert, 39. While they do not have any children together, they seem to have no major regrets.
“Denise miscarried in 1982 with our son at 5 months, and we were advised not to pursue having more children,” said Mike. “When Dee first was expecting the baby. I was visiting a high school and there was a mixed young man who had darker skin, but freckles and red hair. My dad was a redhead, so I also could have ended up with a red/orange headed black kid with freckles. Who knows what kind of teasing or insecurity a kid like that might feel? This was not 2008 – it was 1981. And I had reservations about bringing any baby into this horrible world, regardless of color.”
Despite the passing of many key elders in the family, Mike and Dee continue to spend time with their extended kin and enjoy partaking in various family traditions. My brother Bill is the one we call ‘Old Man’ because he is so quiet and rock solid, really he’s like the head of the family,” said Denise. “He is the closest in age and in relationship to Michael. On the King Holiday every year, Bill takes the day off from the auto plant and barbeques for the whole family.”
Views on Race and Politics in America
Both Mike and Denise were willing to share their thoughts on the topics of race and politics in America, though Mike, who frequently writes articles for Associated Content on these topics, was the more vocal of the two. He spoke out on the issue of being a White man married to a Black woman and what his feelings are on this matter.
People will see my marriage…with a Black woman, and will say, ‘He must like (or have a thing) for Black women!’ Whereas I just feel I am open-minded,” Mike stated.
“How do I say this?” Mike continued. “Let me try a handful of examples pre-1980. The fourth of TV’s Charlie’s Angels, Cheryl Ladd, I thought she was a knockout – way better than the three original. I still love me some Carole King, and her sweet and unassuming natural look. Mary Tyler Moore seemed really pretty back then, although observing now, I do not like that high-tension voice. I was hotter than a firecracker for a Puerto Rican girl way, way, way back when, but the feeling was not mutual, especially when I bit into a bigger-than-average cherry tomato in our first date’s salad and sprayed it all over the place. The prettiest girl in my high school was Mexican American but I was so shy, I was afraid to ask her or anyone out. If I truly am open-minded and not someone with a ‘jones’ for Black women, then this is a reward to me for being open-minded, although of course it’s only on a look-see basis since 1980, that I can see beauty in all.”
Denise on the other hand was short and to-the-point in expressing her views on being married to a White man. “I just accept Michael as Michael. Anybody who does not have time for him does not have time for me, and I know he feels the same way. People all over have their problems, no matter how high up they might want to pretend to be.”
On the subject of how Black women are represented in the media, Mike had much to say:
I hate how women of color are treated as some sort of subspecies in the media. There will be these lists, such as top 10 most beautiful, with either zero women of color or a token. To take things to a more serious level, a Black female news anchor? Maybe on a local station, but never soon on a major network. And so on. And it does not seem to have changed much.”
“Just one example from your old hometown, Jamie, Cynthia Tucker runs the editorial page for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and also does extremely well on television. She not only would do better than Katie Couric, she would run rings around Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, those dominant White male morons who conducted ABC’s Obama-Clinton debate about six weeks back. But we never will see Cynthia Tucker in one of those main anchor chairs. As far as the music video world, I just want to puke when getting a glimpse of how Black women are prostituted in those things.”
Denise expressed her thoughts on European standards of beauty in America, indicating that she never consciously measured herself against these standards. “I never really thought of myself as beautiful, but then never as not beautiful, either,” she said. My family is not especially dark skinned or light skinned either; we are just regular in-the-middle Black people. But I have always liked to dress nice, to look nice, to have my hair nice. Not really expensive clothes or anything like that, but just to look nice.”
When asked if racism has ever impacted either of them in a way that the other couldn’t quite understand, both shared their thoughts. “I would not say so, not like that,” Denise replied. “Sometimes I will sense or feel a prejudice that Michael does not sense or feel, or it can be the other way around.”
“I never try to tell Dee that I understand, only that I try to empathize,” said Mike. “Sometimes I become very upset with white group actions or tendencies, such as this winter and spring the excuses I’ve heard to reject Barack Obama, and Dee is not into trying to feel my frustrations in those regards.”
“I will say that I am for Barack Obama also, but I do not see any way that they will let him become the president, and if somehow that would happen, then they are going to kill him,” Denise stated.
Although he avoided making the same predictions about the presidential race as his wife, Mike did share his frustration over the current state of race relations in American society.
“I just wish I could stop thinking about it. I wish I could stop seeing race issues under every rock and hard place. But I am not crazy, they are there! These race relations just seem to still fall so short, and in fact there has been a decline ever since Reagan came to the forefront with all of his crap. It was not so far long ago in 1980 when Reagan ‘code languaged’ his announcement as a presidential candidate by staging his kickoff in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the slayings of civil rights workers Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in 1964.”
“Reagan further declared in this appearance that he was for ‘states’ rights,’ more code language to define states resisting civil rights,” Mike continued. “And he got away with it! Our genial grandfather, Ronald Reagan. This was the same year I met Dee. But my one haven is my home. Will there ever become a day when a marriage such as ours is not seen as being so unusual?”
Despite the never-ending emphasis on race in the United States, Mike and Denise both confirmed that race does not have a major impact on their marriage. “All the time I see race issues here and there, but not in our marriage. Believe me, we have had a lot of issues, we have almost broken up, we have been at wit’s end, but they were not racial issues in any way for us,” Mike stated.
As today officially marks their 26th wedding anniversary, Mike can only think of the positive. At the close of the interview, he was delighted to reveal a less-known fact about his wife: “About a dozen years ago, at a racially mixed bar, while I unfortunately was at work, Dee won a $25 karaoke for singing Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy.’ She also can sing BOTH the Patti LaBelle part and the Michael McDonald part of ‘On My Own’!
