Despite the fanfare at home and his promotion, Lawrence was still black and Kentucky was still the South, and by default he would have to adhere to enforced segregation and second-class citizenship. Jim Crow was the law, and the lynching of black men was commonplace after Reconstruction, peaking during the 1890s, with spikes until the 1920s. A report by the Equal Justice Initiative concludes that between 1877 and 1950, 4,075 black people were killed by “racial terror lynchings” in a dozen states, including Kentucky.19 Even as a lieutenant, Lawrence still couldn’t socialize in the officers’ club—a space exclusively for white officers—and he still had to drink from “colored” water fountains throughout the state. Eating at restaurants was also off-limits. Most socializing for African Americans was done at church or local dances held for African American troops where devout and educated African Americans congregated.

It was at one of these local dances that Second Lieutenant Lawrence Powell met his future wife. Gladys Farrow was an outspoken, big-boned, brown-skinned woman born in 1896 into a large, close-knit, educated family of African Americans from Murray, Kentucky. She was a schoolteacher and a college graduate.

Although Lawrence didn’t have a degree, he was an officer in the army, which made him a highly attractive prospect for any woman. Plus he looked regal in his official army uniform. The jodhpurs, riding boots, and single-breasted tunic jacket with the army detail on his shoulder commanded respect. The two quickly fell in love.

Gladys was almost twenty-three years old at the time—in that era, an eyebrow-raising age for a single woman without a steady boyfriend—which probably made accepting Lawrence’s marriage proposal a bit easier despite the fact that he had less education than she did. But if marrying late wasn’t shocking enough, Gladys did the unthinkable and left her beloved family in Kentucky to settle in Milton with Lawrence’s people in 1918. It was a painful decision, but Gladys was a hopeless romantic, and so she agreed to move to where the Powells had established themselves comfortably. She was also likely influenced by the absence of Jim Crow in Milton and the fact that they could live with Lawrence’s parents in their spacious house and shop at the same stores and send their kids to the same schools as their white neighbors. She and Lawrence settled in the Powell family house on 114 Granite Place and started their own family almost immediately, having three daughters; Gladys, in 1919, Elinor, in 1921, and Ruth, in 1922.

The move to Massachusetts was a shock for Gladys. “She was from a huge southern family,” said her great-granddaughter Alethea Felton. “The Powells were affluent people, but there weren’t a lot of southern blacks around her and the culture was very different. She was extremely homesick.”