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• About Love in Black and White
• Williams S. Cohen's Papers at The Raymond H. Fogler Library
• The Cohen Group
• Mr. Cohen's bio

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Tavis: Pleased to welcome William Cohen and Janet Langhart Cohen to this program. He is, of course, a former secretary of defense under Bill Clinton and a U.S. Senator from the state of Maine. She is a former journalist who now runs her own communications firm in Washington. Their new book about their life together is called "Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance." They join us tonight from Washington. Mr. Secretary, nice to have you on again, sir.

William Cohen: Well, it's great to be with you again, Tavis.

Tavis: And I'm glad you brought somebody beautiful along with you this time.

Janet Langhart Cohen: (Laughs) This is my maiden voyage with you.

Tavis: (Laughs) I'm glad to have you on, Janet. Nice to see you.

Langhart Cohen: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Let me start with you, Janet. Tell me how the two of you met, and what you thought were the seeds of a relationship that could overcome so many things. Race, religion, politics, and culture.

Langhart Cohen: I didn’t have all of that in mind when I met Bill. I met him in 1974 at a Boston TV station where I was co-hosting a show called "Good Day," and he was coming through as this young freshman congressman to I guess reach his constituents through the broad range of our show. And there he was, as I was walking into the studio. (Laughs) He had this really bad cold, and he was blowing his nose. I know that doesn’t sound very romantic, (laughs) but I took pity on him and married him 25 years later.

Tavis: Well, Mr. Secretary, tell me how you, again, have managed to be a part of a relationship that's overcome - relationships are tough enough - don't I know - tough enough as it is, just to make it work. But you have, again, all these obstacles. Race, religion, your politics were different, and of course, cultures.

Cohen: Well, Tavis, I sort of grew up on the outside of things. My dad is Jewish and my mother is Irish, Protestant Irish. And he sort of crossed the line back in those days. It was really taboo. And so it put me on the outside. He wanted me to be raised Jewish. The Jewish people thought I was a Gentile, the Gentiles thought I was Jewish.

So, I more or less have been on the outside most of my life. But it also built character that I was able to challenge convention and not necessarily be too concerned about what other people were really looking at. So it allowed me to be independent enough and confident enough that I could meet and marry someone as extraordinary as Janet.

Langhart Cohen: Tavis, with Bill's background and experience of anti-Semitism enabled him to be empathetic to my experience and to me, of having suffered racism all of my life, growing up in Jim Crow America. You and I are from Indiana, and of course we didn’t see the signs that they saw in the south, "White Only," "Colored Only," but we saw restricted signs, and it was a very different place than it is now.

Tavis: Tell me, Mr. Secretary, how it is that - or why it is, I should put it another way - you think your relationship has been so well-received in Washington? I ask that because you talk in the book about how the relationship has been received, and at least one of you, if not both of you, had some trepidation early on. Certainly Janet did, not wanting this relationship to ruin your growing and burgeoning career. But you’ve been accepted. I wonder whether or not you think that you would be as accepted in Washington were you not a power couple?

Cohen: I think you’ve hit the major point, Tavis. By virtue of the fact that I was in the Senate, Janet had her own career, I think that the circle in which we were traveling certainly made a difference. And we're not saying we're any kind of a poster couple for interracial marriage. What we say is, follow your heart. Make your love known, and be aware there are consequences.

And I think if our situation were different, if I were the Black male and Janet were the White female, we might have an entirely different reaction, depending upon what part of the United States we were living in or socializing in. I think it makes a difference, depending upon where you are and what society's mores happen to be.

Tavis: And that said, Janet, I wonder, your power couple status notwithstanding, whether or not it is your sense that in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America, we're making progress on people accepting relationships that are, in fact, interracial?

Langhart Cohen: Without a doubt. I think America has taken a big, giant step forward on so many levels. I was asked on another show what grade would I give America, this being Black History Month. And I said, "Well, if you're grading on a curve and you include slavery and institutionalized racism, Jim Crow and lynchings, and then you move on to you, Tavis Smiley, and all the wonderful things you're doing with the Covenant, and to Senator Barack Obama, I think we're gonna get a B plus. I think we've moved."

Tavis: Let me ask you why the two of you chose to dedicate this book I found very fascinating to Anne and Emmett, and what I love about it is that you do assume that we have a little sense, (laughs) cause all you put was Anne and Emmett. But I figured out pretty quickly who you were talking about.

Langhart Cohen: You're the only one who picked that up. It's dedicated to Anne Frank, the little Jewish girl who was murdered in Nazi Germany back in 19, I believe '45, and then to Emmett Till, someone that was a peer of mine. He was murdered in Money, Mississippi in 1955. And I wonder, Tavis, with the two twin heads of evil, racism and anti-Semitism, both having killed them, what they would say to each other?

What would Anne Frank say to Emmett Till if they could have an imaginary dialogue? And because they represent in their life and in their death the struggles that Bill and I have experienced, I thought it would be wonderful to make the dedication to them. Thank you for noticing that.

Cohen: And in the book, as a matter of fact, there is a one-act play that Janet has included called "The Annex," which is where Anne Frank and her family were hiding.

Tavis: Let me ask you, Mr. Secretary, whether or not your wife ever told you what she whispered to Strom Thurmond as she was walking down the aisle on your wedding day? You write in the book - you kind of tease us. You write in the book that on your wedding day, Strom Thurmond was at the wedding, and what news he's made of late, even though dead. We now found that he and Al Sharpton are related, can you imagine that?

Cohen: (Laughs) I was just gonna say, she wasn't asking about Al Sharpton. (Laughs) And maybe the next test will be there'll be a DNA test, and maybe they're related after all, I don't know. No, actually, Strom Thurmond had indicated that he was going to sit in the back row, and Janet was concerned about protocol, him being the oldest member in the Senate.

He should have been up front with Trent Lott. And as a matter of fact, Senator Thurmond said, "No, no, that's for your family. I don't wanna take that position." So it was not a snub on his part, he was there voluntarily. And Janet can tell you that when he looked at her, it was different this time, probably for the first time in (unintelligible).

Langhart Cohen: You know the curious thing? He was the first face I saw as they opened the doors for me to walk down to Bill to take our vows. And I thought about my grandparents and great-grandparents. They would have been turning over in their grave at the thought that Strom Thurmond was at their granddaughter's wedding.

But the curious thing I told Bill later, I saw a look on Senator Strom Thurmond's face that I had never seen before. And it was almost a paternalistic look? And I said to Bill that night, I said, "He looked at me as though I might have been his daughter. He looked at me like the father of the bride." And later, we were to learn that he, in fact, did have a Black daughter.

Tavis: Yeah, absolutely.

Langhart Cohen: So I wondered if he was thinking about me. Or maybe Al Sharpton (laughs).

Tavis: Mr. Secretary, I wonder what you make of the fact that you were, in fact, honored to have been married in the Capitol Building?

Cohen: Well, it was a very significant thing for us to do, because that building, the United States Capitol, was built on the backs of slaves. And they had to lift all of those stones and put that thing together, and the words of equality and justice were not meant for them. And I thought it was quite a testament to where we are today, how far we have come - America, White America, has come as a nation, to have a descendent of slaves be walking hand-in-hand down the aisle under that great dome.

It says a lot about this country. We still have a long way to go. There's still the Michael Richards, there's still anti-Semitism, there still is this issue, neo-Nazism coming back in Europe, and monkey calls going out to Black football players or soccer players, as they call them. But we can see - shine that light of sunshine on the bigots, and we're making some great progress by forcing them to understand how hatred really kills the American dream. And that it's really a question of hope for the future.

Tavis: So Janet, you know how this TV thing works. The clock says I got two minutes and 30 seconds left. I tried to suppress my jealousy of you all the way through this conversation, but I gotta let it out. I tried to hold it down. Your relationship with Dr. King. You know Dr. King, I believe, is the greatest American we've ever produced. He is my hero, and you had a relationship with him. Not in terms of like the kind you have with Bill Cohen, let me correct that. (Laughs)

Langhart Cohen: No, he was my mentor.

Tavis: Exactly. But the way you met him is the funniest story I have ever heard.

Langhart Cohen: Oh, I was at this freedom rally. I'm more a follower of Malcolm X, especially at the time, than I was of Dr. King. But I went to the freedom rally in Chicago, and I was with the late Bob Johnson of "Jet" magazine. And I turned around and I saw this tall, dark, handsome man, and it was Sidney Poitier. And I said to Bob, "Take me over, I wanna meet him." And on the way over, I was so anxious I spilled a Coke on another man. And that other man was Dr. King. (Laughs) And from that moment on…

Tavis: You spilled a Coke on Dr. King.

Langhart Cohen: (Laughs) Dr. King. But he was so nice about it. Everybody gathered around to protect him, because it hadn’t been long before he was stabbed, remember? In New York. So, they were all concerned about him. And he looked at me and just brushed it off, and he said, "That's okay, child." And we became great friends. I knew him the last two years of his life. I learned so much from him. And I saw you at the dedication of his memorial, and I cried my heart out. He would be so proud.

Tavis: It's not just that you met him, but you hung out with him and his favorite, Mahalia Jackson

Langhart Cohen: Oh, I love her. Just the sound of her name sends shivers up your spine at the voice, the gift that God gave her to lift it. And she loved Dr. King. He was like her child. And the irony was that she would sing at his funeral. And she sang like an angel sending him off to Heaven, sending him home.

Tavis: And as you well know, the only woman to mount the podium at the March on Washington, singing there, as well.

Langhart Cohen: That's right.

Tavis: There are some great stories in this book. I haven’t done justice to the surface of it, even, quite frankly. It is the new book by former defense secretary, former senator from Maine, William Cohen and his lovely wife Janet Langhart Cohen, a legend in her own right. The new book is called "Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance." I highly recommend it. Honored to have you both on the program.

Cohen: Well, we just want to…

Langhart Cohen: We're proud of you.

Cohen: …tell you what we know.

Tavis: Well, we appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming on.

Langhart Cohen: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Take care.