Color and Custody

After suffering severe brain damage in an auto accident eight years ago, Clara Jean Damaschke, a Michigan housewife, was committed to a mental hospital. Later, her husband Frank got a divorce and remarried. Four months after the divorce, Clara Jean gave birth to a son, whose father was probably a Negro. The man's identity was never determined, and Frank Damaschke took the boy home to live with him.

He and his new wife were delighted. Together they had six daughters and one son from their previous marriages. Young Scott, who is bright and alert, quickly took his place as the family's younger brother. Delight turned to dismay when the Damaschkes tried to make certain that Scott would always be legally theirs. At least five court decisions in Michigan have established that a man who gets a divorce has a right to be treated as the father of any child born within nine months of the decree.

But at a hearing in circuit court, Damaschke was surprised to find that Judge Halford Streeter was not at all impressed by such precedents. Streeter was far more concerned about the fact that Scott's Negroid characteristics proved that Damaschke was not the boy's father --even though no one claimed that he was. More important, the judge made it clear that racial integration is not particularly popular in Port Huron, where the Damaschkes live. "I am a politician," said Streeter. "I get around the county, or I wouldn't have been elected three times, and I know of no white family in St. Clair county that has a colored child outside of this one."

Oriental Playmates? Both Streeter and Assistant Prosecutor Ronald Flanigan argued that two-year-old Scott would be more comfortable living in the colored South Park section of Port Huron instead of in the Damaschkes' white neighborhood. "There's a noticeable difference in color between your other children in the home and Scott, is there not?" Flanigan asked Damaschke's wife Joy, belaboring the obvious. Does the boy have any Negro, Indian or Oriental playmates? asked the prosecutor. Judge Streeter had a question for the social worker who testified for the Damaschkes. "Can't you foresee the difficulties for this child when he gets to be 16 or 17 and begins to date?" he asked. "If he goes to school with only white girls, will he have the same problem as if he went to school in South Park?" The social worker suggested that because of Scott's mixed parentage he would have problems no matter whom he lived with.

Streeter turned down Damaschke's motion. Shifting the case to probate court, he told Damaschke to initiate adoption proceedings. Damaschke has understandably decided to appeal Streeter's ruling. He is afraid that if the probate court turns him down, Scott may be sent to another family. It seems a reasonable fear, especially since Judge Streeter had occasion to remark that "I act as probate judge when the regular judge is absent."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.