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Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander (May 9, 1903 – February 20, 1936) was an American socialite and a member of the socially prominent and wealthy New York Rhinelander family. His marriage at the age of 21 to Alice Jones, a biracial woman who was a working-class daughter of English immigrants, made national headlines in 1924. Their 1925 divorce trial highlighted contemporary strains related to the instability of the upper class, as well as racial anxiety about "passing" at a time when New York was a destination for numerous blacks from the South in the Great Migration and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The trial also touched on the vague legal definition of the time as to who was to be considered "white" or "colored," alternately portraying race as biologically determined and knowable or as more fluid. ==Early years== Leonard "Kip" Rhinelander was born in 1903 Pelham, New York to Adelaide Brady (née Kip) and Philip Jacob Rhinelander. Called Kip, he was the youngest of five children, including four sons and one daughter. The couple's eldest child, Issac Leonard Kip Rhinelander, died in infancy. The mother Adelaide Rhinelander died on September 11, 1915 after sustaining burns when an alcohol lamp on her dressing table exploded. The third son, T.J. Oakley Rhinelander, died in France in 1918 while serving in the 107th Regiment during World War I. Kip Rhinelander had problems with stuttering and was portrayed as relatively slow in school. The immigrant ancestor of the Rhinelander family in America was Philip Jacob Rhinelander, a German-born French Huguenot who immigrated to the United States in 1686 to escape religious persecution following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He settled in the newly formed French Huguenot community of New Rochelle in 1686, where he amassed considerable property holdings, the basis for the family's wealth. The Rhinelanders built great prominence and wealth through their involvement in real estate, as values rose with development, and the shipping industry. The Rhinelanders are considered one of the nation's earliest shipbuilders. The family also had holdings in real estate and owned the Rhinelander Real Estate Company. By the late 19th century, many members of the family were active in philanthropic causes and participated in New York high society〔 as part of rituals that reinforced the class lines of presumed white ancestry, wealth and Protestant religion. But the upper class was unstable in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Violations of marriage conventions within the class were often socially punished. Leonard's uncle William Rhinelander, his father's older brother, had caused a scandal in 1876 by marrying Margueretta McGuiness, an Irish Catholic immigrant who had been a servant in the family's household. For his violation of class mores by the marriage, William was estranged from and disinherited by his parents. After William shot the family lawyer in 1884 on suspicion that the man was withholding a remittance, the family attempted to have their son declared insane (which might also enable them to annul his marriage). William Rhinelander succeeded in defeating the lunacy charge and being released from jail, but the estrangement lasted and he continued to embarrass his family. He was disinherited and dropped from the family's genealogical charts.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kip Rhinelander」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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