Their marriage demanded courage not required of most people in love.
But Lawrence and Lena Nelson accepted the challenge of interracial marriage and they've kept it together for 50 years.
"She didn't look at me as Black; I didn't look at her as White," Lawrence said, sitting with his wife in their east Mesa home.
"Our hearts," Lena added, "didn't know the difference."
But others did, and so did statutes outlawing interracial marriage in most states in the 1950s.
It was almost a century after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War ended, but racism was still unbowed in much of the nation.
Like many couples, Lawrence and Lena met on the job. But 1956 was in an era where any similarity with other budding relationships ended.
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