By the time I was born, my great-grandparents had been married for 50 years. Their stoic, straight-backed photographs hung on the walls of the home where they raised ten children. I remember their daily bickering, how our family played it for laughs, and how many of my cousins aspired to long and devoted — if ornery — marriages because of our elders’ example. The longevity alone was what appealed to them, but I’ve often wondered how many of those years were happy. Was happiness even a goal? They wed in 1920s Mississippi, when legal marriage for black Americans was less than a century old. Just one generation removed from slavery, when black families were forcibly separated, they believed that marriage was a radical means for reclaiming agency. Staying wed was a principle of justice as much as it was a declaration of love or a claim to financial security.

On occasion, my great-grandparents’ terseness with one another belied a private tenderness; but in retrospect, I wonder if it may have also signaled any regret. How stark and secret were the compromises they required of one another to preserve their marriage, which we all held in such high esteem?

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