Post #293098 by ikitnrev on Mon, Mar 19, 2007 11:54 AM

I found on Time Magazine's on-line archives, a story from the 1960's about Meki and JoAnn Toalepai. It is interesting to see that the Senator mentioned in the Time story, Daniel Inoyue, is still the Senator for Hawaii!

Colorless Conjugality
February 25, 1966

Maryland (the "Free State"), which adopted the nation's first antimiscegenation statute in 1661 to keep white women servants from marrying Negro slaves, also passed one of the nation's last such laws in 1935. Aimed at preventing Filipino mess boys at the Naval Academy in Annapolis from taking all-too-willing local brides, it bars marriage of either whites or Negroes with "a member of the Malay race." So, when Jo Ann Kovacs, 25, a white Baltimore nurse, and Meki Toalepai, 26, a handsome singer-dancer-musician from Western Samoa, applied for a marriage license in Baltimore this month, they were refused. Maryland, the unhappy couple quickly discovered, would allow Jo Ann to marry anyone whose skin was red, yellow or white, while Meki could legally take a wife whose skin was red, yellow or brown. But brown and white (or white, brown and black) are not a permissible permutation.

Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, a Hawaiian of Japanese descent who lives in Maryland when Congress is in session, protested that half of the population of Hawaii would be considered "impure" in the eyes of Maryland. The law, he added, would make "interesting reading in many parts of Southeast Asia where we talk about democracy."

State Senator Verda Welcome, the only Negro in Maryland's upper house, immediately introduced a bill to abolish the miscegenation statute, but her repealer was given little chance in a legislature still dominated by rural, Dixie-oriented lawmakers. The Maryland law and similar statutes in 17 other states (all Southern or border states except Wyoming) may be killed only when miscegenation is considered squarely by the Supreme Court, which has thus far avoided the constitutional question involved. As for Meki and Jo Ann, they were married last week in the Washington (Episcopal) Cathedral before driving to their new home in California. "Who," asked Meki before leaving Maryland, "would want to live here?"

And another sidenote to the Emerson Hotel, and a tangentail connection to mixed drinks, that some may find interesting.

The Emerson Hotel was built by and named for Isaac E Emerson, who made a fortune by inventing Bromo-Seltzer, which was used to ail upset stomachs and indigestion. He formed the Emerson Drug Company in 1891.

In the 1950's, scientists from the Emerson Drug Company were wondering if a fruit flavored drink could be developed using similar methods as were used for their Bromo-Setzer product. They wanted to be able to drop a tablet into a glass of water, and create instant soda pop. The result was called 'Fizzies' - a candy which is still manufactured today. Their original cost was 8 tablets for 25 cents.

All we need now is a Baltimore developed mai-tai flavored Fizzie product. We could carry such a tablet in our wallets, and pull it out in case of an emergency, for those moments when we need a mai-tai and cannot just say no.

Vern