Race Relations and Historical Context in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Silas Nyamweya College

Over one hundred years ago, legendary historian and sociologist, W. E. B. DuBois said, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line” (DuBois). Interracial marriage was highly controversial and rarely witnessed because of segregation and discrimination during the decade of the sixties. Southern states actually had miscegenation statutes prohibiting it. This well-scripted, award-winning film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner tackles the subject of interracial marriage. The principal characters portray authentic “sixties society” and the difficulties that accompany interracial marriage. They deliver fascinating performances of the social customs, which wrongly regarded black people as a “problem,” and offer audiences the possibility of seeing past race-related misconceptions.

Although black people were perfect as cooks, nannies, maids, butlers, bellmen and chauffeurs, socially, they were undesirable for marriage to whites. In this film, Joanna Drayton – young, cheerful and white – is the daughter of a wealthy newspaper publisher, who falls irreversibly in love with a handsome, accomplished doctor and widower, John Wade Prentice. In addition to all of his medical successes – he happens to be African-American....