In 1967 the daughter of Secretary of State Dean Rusk and her new husband, Guy Smith, made national headlines, because Margaret Rusk was white and Smith was an African-American. They married in California, where less than twenty years before interracial marriages had been considered illegal; until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1966 struck down a Virginia law against such unions, in fact, sixteen states prohibited marriages between people of different races bylaw By 1967 racial attitudes in general were somewhat more enlightened; still, Rusk's concern over the possible negative response to his daughter and Smith's marriage was serious enough to prompt the Secretary to offer his resignation to President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson did not accept the resignation and gave the marriage his blessing. One generally thinks of a marriage as being the business of the bride and groom and their families, but in the racially...