Marriage
Simmons legally changed her name to Dawn Pepita Langley Hall, and became engaged to John-Paul Simmons, then a young black motor mechanic with dreams of becoming a sculptor. Their marriage on 21 January 1969 was the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina, and the ceremony was carried out in their drawing room reportedly after threats to bomb the church. After a second ceremony in England, the crate containing their wedding gifts was firebombed in Charleston, and Simmons received a ticket the next day when the charred remains were obstructing a sidewalk.
On 17 October 1971, her daughter, Natasha Margienell Manigault Paul Simmons, was born, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ball claims to have been told by John-Paul Simmons that Natasha was his child from another relationship, although "Natasha fervently believed Dawn was her mother".
After an intruder raped Simmons and broke her arm, the family moved to Catskill, New York.
Read more about this topic: Dawn Langley Simmons
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don’t know, but they do.”
—Patricia Neal (b. 1926)
“Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)