A Love To Bring Down Barriers

When Marian Wright and Peter Edelman married in July 1968, their wedding was like an armistice. In April, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated; two months later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered — on June 6, Mrs. Edelman’s birthday. For years afterward, the couple would spend that day at Arlington Cemetery. The national tragedies were personal for the couple: Mrs. Edelman had worked for Dr. King, and Mr. Edelman had been an aide to the senator.

The New York Times covered the wedding as a news story, sending Nan Robertson, then a reporter for the paper’s Washington bureau. The ceremony was held on the lawn at the home of their friend, Adam Walinsky, a speechwriter for Senator Kennedy, in McLean, Va. The choice to marry in Virginia was deliberate: A year earlier, the state’s law against interracial marriage had been struck down in a suit brought by Richard and Mildred Loving. The Edelmans were the third interracial couple to marry there after the Lovings prevailed.

“I hate barriers,” Mrs. Edelman said. “And it was a time to bring down barriers.”