LOS ANGELES — Their wedding day was bookended by the deaths of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert F. Kennedy in June. The Vietnam War raged abroad as a fight for civil rights continued at home.
For many, 1968 was marked by violence, bloodshed and protest. For Janice, a white woman, and Charles, a black man, 1968 marked the unlikely beginning of a 50-year marriage filled with four children and 11 grandchildren.
Interracial marriages were by no means a societal norm the year the Tylers wed. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down the remaining laws that banned such unions, was handed down one year before. Charles and Janice were not directly affected by the case — Illinois wasn’t one of the remaining 16 states. They did face prejudice, nonetheless.
“Back then, you just didn’t see black and white,” Charles said about the racial divide.