As always, thank you Gustavca for your editing help and assistance.
*****
White men taking sexual advantage of black women has a long history in the south. The assumption that powerful white men could take a black woman as a sexual partner whether she wanted to or not, whether she was married or not, regardless of her desires or social status was intellectually known as "Paramour Rights". Free of any real legal responsibility, for the white man this served to keep black women victimized and "in their place". For a white man seeking to acquire and retain personal, sexual power and control taking on a colored mistress and fathering mixed-race children was the ideal circumstance.
As late, as the 1950s there were parts of the Segregationist South where many white men still practiced this unwritten law of the pre-Civil War South that allowed a white man to claim a black woman and force her to have his children. Though not always discernable, regardless of the color of her skin, a woman was considered a "Negress" if she could be proven to have even a single drop of African blood.
I grew up in the South, and at the start of World War Two, I enlisted and served as an Air Force pilot. When I came home, I went to school, eventually earned a law degree and successfully passed the Bar. I guess you could say I became a big fish in a small pond with developing political aspirations. Well liked by the community, both white and black, I enjoyed a reputation as a benevolent and honest lawyer who administered to the needy white folks and our Negroes as well.
The environment in which I lived was privileged, white and entitled. While I understood, using another person for whatever reason to be morally wrong, like many men, my ego, sexual desires, and carnal needs won out. Looking back, I know I've done things that I am not proud of, foremost being my initial attitude toward Frannie and the way I treated her with such brutish self-interest. By the time I discovered Frannie, my marriage was already in trouble. I had indulged in several affairs with various ladies, and the fact that I was much older than Fran didn't seem to matter, all I could think about was having her.
*****
I first saw Frances Laurette Randolph one morning in town while accompanying my then wife Elizabeth shopping. Of course, I didn't mean to stare, but her loveliness literally took my breath away. She was probably about twenty years old then, young, innocent, untouched. This gorgeous honey colored creature was just under 5'5", maybe 110 lbs., slender but shapely, with firm high breasts and a tight, rounded behind. She had large brown eyes framed by long, thick lashes and a full sensual mouth. I think her hair might have been her crowning glory. It was the most radiant shade of chestnut brown I can ever remember seeing and she wore her long, thick beautiful hair loose, cascading over her shoulders. Despite my wife standing there next to me, I found myself wondering what it would feel like to have that chestnut hued softness brush between my legs when she bent over me to suck my dick. A car horn blew in the distance and broke my reverie, my attention once again drawn back to watching her leisurely window shop as she made her way down the street toward us.
The day was warm and humid and she wore a full skirted yellow summer dress that tied at the waist with a wide yellow satin ribbon. The scoop necked bodice demurely displayed the blush of her breasts captured beneath the soft fabric, and in accordance with the fashion of the day, she wore a prim pair of smart, white gloves and a broad brimmed hat to protect her face from the heat and hot sun.
She walked down the street smiling and chatting with colored folks she met on the street but would only smile deferential at the white women and actually avert her eyes or lower her head just the slightest bit when she passed a white man.
She drew closer and when she passed by me, I swear my cock twitched in my pants and I could feel a hard-on starting to grow. Before she could avert her eyes, I briefly made eye contact with her and smiled nonthreateningly. She looked at me and smiled shyly but continued pass, the scent of lemon verbena wafted from her and lingered in the air. That scent would always remind me of her.
I couldn't take my eyes off her and could feel my jaw tighten when I saw a young Negro man come out of the feed store and intimately touch her bare arm as they talked. For some reason, this infuriated me.
I was more than a little taken with her, and I wanted to find out more about her. I mentioned this to Bill, one of the other attorneys at the court house. Bill stopped thumbing through the old dusty law book and with a big shit eating grin said, "You don't know who she is, do you?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Damn it, man, that woman you got the hots for is Frances Randolph, old Jim Randolph's stepdaughter. You know, he and his wife run the general store down there in the Quarters . . . and she ain't white."
Frances was actually mixed-race, what white folks around here called Quadroon and the coloreds called "high-yellow" or almost white. "She a beauty, there's no denying that, hell she's way prettier than most of the white girls in town. From what I hear, her momma is a Quadroon from around New Orleans and old Jim is her second husband, Fran's daddy was a white man," Bill went on.
I started asking around town, talking to some of the older colored folks and it became obvious that there had been more than one occurrence of her female relatives being involved with and impregnated by white men. That explained her appearance and coloring, the result of several generations of race mixing on her mother's side. If you didn't know her true background you might easily assume she was white.
Fran's Momma, Amelia, grew up in a small parish outside of New Orleans. Like her mother before her she and came from a continuing line of mulatto and quadroon women bearing children fathered by white men. Fran's biological father was a white man and her Momma had been a young servant in the old man's house. From what I could piece together from the gossip and hearsay, her mother had been involved with her white employer since she was a girl. The old man was thrilled when Amelia became pregnant with Fran. He foolishly thought Amelia and baby Fran would remain in the house after her birth and that their relationship would continue as it had in the past. Of course, things didn't work out that way; his wife threatened to divorce him, and soon after Fran's birth, he sent Amelia and the baby to live in a little cabin that he owned near town, and that's where Fran grew up until her father died and her Momma married Jim Randolph.
Frannie was young, and would have been a kid when I went into the Air Force. By the time I finished law school, married and returned here she was living in a different town, staying with relatives until she graduated school and came back here to teach. When I saw her in town that day, she had only returned a few months prior after being offered the job of teacher at the colored school.
I was surprised and disappointed when I found out she wasn't white. It didn't matter though, because I had already made up my mind that I was going to have Frances Randolph.
*****
I was always careful to be respectful whenever I saw Fran in town. Despite our social and racial differences, she always seemed pleased to see and talk with me. As she became more comfortable with me, she often talked of her time away at school, her teaching career, her fiancé and their plans to marry within the year.
