They would not let racism impede their ability to provide a good life for their family. If that meant living a life in constant motion in an attempt to keep racism at bay, then that’s what Elinor and Frederick did. When Morton no longer worked for them, they left, just as they had done with Göttingen, and Boston before that.

They were running away from racism, an impossible feat. Jim Crow and other discriminatory barriers were there to greet them every time they moved. During the 1950s, interracial marriages were still quite threatening to many. They represented an undoing of what was considered normal, which was “sticking with your own kind.”6 Society left no ambiguity on the issue. As of 1951, twenty-nine states legally barred interracial marriages between blacks and whites. Most were in the South, but that didn’t mean northern states didn’t subscribe to the same racist views. It just indicated that the black population in those locations was small or interracial marriage was so rare that no legal statutes were put in place. Judges could still deny a marriage license to a mixed-race couple for a host of reasons.7

Elinor and Frederick moved just a few miles away to the suburb of Media, where they rented a small two-story house that Elinor decorated with midcentury modern furnishings. And Frederick decided to make a career change. He wasn’t going to be a mechanic all his life. Artistry of any kind was his passion, and Frederick believed there was an opportunity in the culinary arts. His knack for baking had gotten him through two years of imprisonment during the war, and in 1954 he decided to return to the kitchen. He applied for a scholarship to the American Institute of Baking in Chicago, and he received it. The program required Frederick to move there for one year, leaving Elinor and the children in Pennsylvania.

During this time, Elinor wanted to seek employment as a nurse, particularly while Frederick was away and sending money home from whatever odd job he worked as a baking student. As always, the idea of Elinor being away from the children created stress in the marriage, even though the additional income was helpful. More than the money, Elinor missed adult contact, having friends, and caring for those in need. She loved being a mother, but she was unfulfilled in other ways. She was eerily in the same position as her mother years before when she was told she could no longer be a schoolteacher as a married woman in Milton, and Elinor began to experience the same angst. However, it had been the law that forced Gladys to stay home, not her husband.