One of my peeves about audience reception to Stack and Mary, is that too many people don’t know their history, therefore their understanding of them as a couple is extremely narrow.
Y’all know Mary not my favorite and I think she’s selfish in her strive to get Stack to stay with/around her. However, it was 1932! She wasn’t just some lovesick woman who didn’t understand the “gangster lifestyle” Stack was living.
Mary was one drop Black, raised by a quarter Black mother, who was raised by a half Black man. Her family intentionally evaded the Klan because they knew what would happen had they been discovered, yet Mary seemingly continuously brushed that aside because she wanted Stack. Which is understandable to an extent. They fell in love at a young age and were partially raised in the same house. They’ve known each other their whole lives, so it’s an obvious bond that is difficult to break.
However, viewing Stack’s decisions to push her away and talk down to her, was not because he was a gangster. It is literally because, as he said in the movie, SHE COULD GET KILLED BY WHITE PEOPLE! Of course he could too, but he obviously cared less about his safety than he did hers, because that’s the type of guy he was.
But I say it’s a peeve, because the humor in their earlier moment seems to have distracted people from the historical context. Black people could be beaten if not murdered for simply making eye contact with the wrong white person, which was why Stack told Sammie not to look at Mary, and why he himself did not maintain prolonged eye contact with her at the train station (aka in public view of other white people.)
Their relationship was not impossible because he was a criminal. It was impossible because it was more likely to result in their deaths by way of the Klan or a “good samaritan” white person who happened across them and decided for themselves that Mary was in distress.
I get it, I know y’all love a pretty interracial couple with a white woman in it, but I beg folks to pick up a history book. Skim and scan a Wikipedia article. Something!
Stack and Mary were much more complex than “The gangster wanting to protect his love.” And Smoke didn’t oppose them because he didn’t support interracial relationships. He didn’t support them being together, because being with Mary was a direct threat to Stack’s life, and we know he didn’t play that shit.
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