Melvyn R. Leventhal

Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal (born March 18, 1943) is an American attorney known for his work as a community organizer and lawyer in the 1960s–70s Civil Rights Movement, and for being the husband of author Alice Walker for ten years; they were the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi history. Early life and education Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, Leventhal attended a yeshiva elementary school and Brooklyn Technical High School. When he was nine years old, his parents divorced, and he and his siblings were split up, with the father taking Leventhal's older brother to live with him. Leventhal recalled that he rarely saw his father after that, and that on one occasion, when Leventhal was a teenager, he took a younger sibling to see their father, who "slammed the door in our face". In Leventhal's formative years he was greatly influenced by Judaism's emphasis on community service and in particular recalls being "outraged and disgusted by the way white people treated Jackie Robinson". He resolved to fight injustice, and in pursuit of this, after receiving his undergraduate degree from New York University's Washington Square College in 1964, he received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 1967. Early career and marriage As a young lawyer, Leventhal worked in Mississippi for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (“LDF”), and from this work he formed the first interracial law partnership in the state's history, with Reuben V. Anderson, Fred L. Banks Jr., and John A. Nichols. Anderson and Banks went on to become the first two African American justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court. Through his work, Leventhal met Alice Walker, who came to trust and admire him due to his willingness to endanger his own social status and well-being by standing up to bigotry. On March 17, 1967, Leventhal and Walker married in New York, in a civil ceremony performed by Family Court Judge Justine W. Polier. The marriage was at that time illegal in Walker's home state of Georgia. When the couple returned to Mississippi in July 1967, they were the first legally married interracial couple in the state. Walker and Leventhal had one child, Rebecca Walker, and divorced in 1976.