It's difficult to discern what is fiction and what is autobiographical in Laura Mundo's novel Belmont but she was right about her adopted hometown of Dearborn, Michigan being a white-holdout. As mentioned on page 159, and continuing in the same vein as the last post concerning An Open Letter to the Militant Black Man, Laura was concerned about racial conflicts. While it's difficult to know if she really briefly dated a black man in 1930s Boston as she claimed in the autobiographical novel, she seemingly wished to build a bridge between the races as well as all people.
Curiously enough, she had emceed the Santa Claus parade in Dearborn for at least a couple years in the early 1950s, appearing as Midge alongside her co-worker Merri Melody from the television show Play School with the honorable Orville Hubbard, mayor of Dearborn, perhaps the most openly racist politician in the north. Which is not to suggest an nefarious connection between the two acquaintances but she was definitely in the thick of his reign as a vociferous white propagandist and the two were familiar with one another, if only in a work setting.
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| Detroit Free Press, November 7, 1952 |
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