At the turn of the 20th century, the US was captivated by a real-life fairy tale love story. Rose Pastor, a Russian Jewish immigrant and former cigar factory worker, improbably met and married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of a wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family.
Their storybook romance had an unexpected chapter. Although Pastor married into the American aristocracy and took the name Rose Pastor Stokes, the couple embraced and fought for progressive principles such as organized labor, racial equality and birth control. They joined the new Socialist Party, hosting dinner-table conversations with like-minded thinkers including Eugene Debs, Margaret Sanger, W. E. B. Du Bois and Emma Goldman.
