One of the veterans who settled this hostile land was an American of English descent who had fought for the fledgling nation against the crown. William Ragland was a Methodist who emigrated from Cornwall. A planter and land speculator, he had moved from Virginia to North Carolina, then seized the opportunity to head south to Georgia with his slaves. Slaves were often given their masters’ surnames, and Meghan’s ancestor was owned by William Ragland. After his emancipation, Richard and his descendants became one of Georgia’s black families named Ragland. Richard’s son Steve married a white woman. If Meghan’s parents were looked at askance in the Southern California of the 1980s, imagine how people in rural Georgia of the Reconstruction era regarded Steve Ragland and his wife, Texie Hendrick!
Successive generations of the Ragland family, black, white, and mixed race, toiled primarily in menial jobs—factory workers, domestics, and janitors—in America’s Deep South. Meghan’s great-great-grandparents, Jeremiah Ragland and Claudie Ritchie, both recorded in a census as “mulatto,” managed to get out of Jonesboro, moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Claudie was a maid in a shop. Jeremiah was a saloon porter, but he also acquired the skills to work in various trades, first as a barber, and later setting up his own shop as a tailor. Time marched on. And with it came better opportunities.
Fleeing the region’s prejudice and violence during the Jim Crow era, the family moved north, then west, part of the Great Migration that dates to the First World War. With so many white men being sent overseas to fight, the recruitment of African Americans by northern industries resulted in employment opportunities. The reasons for leaving the South were aspirational as well. There were simply more possibilities for a better life.
On Meghan’s maternal grandmother’s side, her ancestors Hunter and Gertrude migrated to Ohio with their daughter Nettie. On her maternal grandfather’s side, Meghan’s great-aunt Dora became a teacher. Dora’s nephew Alvin—Meghan’s maternal grandfather—was an antiques dealer who collected vintage cars. In 1940, Alvin was an unemployed former gas station attendant when he registered for the draft.
In California, the Raglands became teachers and Realtors, the family’s first white-collar jobs.
Alvin married Nettie’s daughter Jeanette, a nurse who gave birth in 1956 to Meghan’s mother, Doria.
When Doria was seven years old, her parents took a car trip from Ohio to California with their three kids.
Meghan was eleven when her maternal grandparents told her the story of that journey. Years later, in her thirties, she wrote about their experience on her lifestyle blog, The Tig, in a Martin Luther King Day post on January 9, 2015.
When Meghan was a child, road trips meant “Are we there yet?”
Things were different then, her grandfather Alvin told her.
“Meggie, on our road trip, when we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to go to the back for ‘coloreds.’ The kitchen staff handed me the chicken from the back door and we ate in the parking lot. That’s just what it was.”
That’s just what it was.
Years after she first heard her grandparents’ anecdote about their experience in the Jim Crow South, Meghan remained haunted by it. She wrote: “It reminds me of how young our country is. How far we’ve come and how far we still have to come. It makes me think of the countless black jokes people have shared in front of me, not realizing I am mixed. Unaware that I am the ethnically ambiguous fly on the wall. It makes me wonder what my parents experienced as a mixed race couple.”
Meghan closed her blog post with a dedication that quoted Dr. King: to her “mom and dad for choosing each other ‘not for the color of their skin but for the content of their character’ . . . to all of you champions of change: Thank you.”
Meghan’s grandparents eventually divorced, and Alvin married Ava Burrows, now a retired teacher. Ms. Burrows is totally tickled by her step-granddaughter’s impending marriage, telling an interviewer, “Meggie marrying a prince? Who’d have thunk!” She slapped her thigh in amusement. “I’m kind of expecting a visit from the men in black suits [the FBI] to check us out. I guess it’s like your Downtown [sic] Abbey—and we’re the folks downstairs.”
Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, whom Meghan describes as a “free spirit,” is said to be as effervescent as her daughter. “Giggly, warm, passionate, brilliant, nurturing, and fun,” according to a friend who has known her since Meghan was a baby.
Doria was born and raised in a middle-class African American community of Los Angeles. In middle age, she earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California and became a certified yoga instructor. Her specialty is working with geriatric clients. Doria still lives in Los Angeles, in View Park–Windsor Hills, one of the wealthiest primarily African American residential neighborhoods in the United States. If a romance novelist wrote that Meghan Markle headed from View Park–Windsor Hills to Windsor Castle, her editor would likely request her to change the name of the neighborhood because it sounds too perfectly pat to actually be true!
Meghan’s parents separated when she was only two years old, but they made every attempt to provide their young daughter with a stable home environment. After the separation, the three of them would still vacation together. On Sunday evenings, after Meghan spent weekends with her father, the burly, bearded Thomas would drop her back at her mother’s apartment, a second-story flat situated above a garage in the ethnically diverse Miracle Mile neighborhood on a wide street lined with stately royal palms.
The single-family homes and low-rise multiunit dwellings have the classic Southern California architecture: stucco facades with red-tile roofs. Out front, postage-stamp-sized lawns are fringed with flowers and succulents. Upstairs, in Doria’s apartment, after Thomas brought Meghan home, the trio would watch Jeopardy! together as they ate their dinner off TV trays in front of the set. “We were still so close-knit,” Meghan recalls.
Never once did little Meghan see her parents arguing. Nevertheless, in 1987, when she was only six years old, her parents finally divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. They were awarded joint custody of Meghan, with the agreement that she would reside mainly with her mother and spend some weeks as well as some summer holidays with her father—similar to Prince Harry’s situation after his parents separated. Although Meghan lived with her mother, she was extremely close to her father as well. She often saw her half-siblings when she visited her dad, and got along well with Thomas Jr., fifteen years her senior, and Samantha, who, being two years older than her brother, was nearly a generation older than Meghan.
The year her parents divorced, a new sitcom, Married . . . with Children, became a cult hit. Thomas Markle, who also lit the General Hospital sets for thirty-five years, was a lighting director for eleven episodes during the first season of Married . . . with Children; and from 1988 through 1996, logged 198 episodes as the show’s cinematographer.
Some of Meghan’s early years were spent at a house on the beach in Santa Monica, where, when Thomas threw parties, he would proudly show off his daughter to his show business friends. As times became even better, they moved back inland to the affluent Woodland Hills area in the Valley.
Thomas and Doria kept things amicable. Meghan was a frequent visitor to the Married . . . with Children set, where the stars would make a fuss over her. She was bitten by the acting bug before she became old enough to be inoculated against the hardships of a career in show business.
Thomas Markle had worked his way up to the top of his profession from his extremely humble beginnings in that small town in Pennsylvania. His childhood Christmas stockings had been filled with oranges; dinners were potatoes and Spam. “He invested in my future so I could have so much,” Meghan recalls. And that future included a private school education, all expenses paid.
Meghan was enrolled at Hollywood’s Little Red School House, a private grammar school for prekindergarten through sixth grade, known for its progressive educational bent. The school’s stated mission is “
to nurture the whole child within a diverse community, combining challenging academics with creative learning, where each child is known, encouraged, and valued.”
Although the building has a distinctive red wooden facade and a farmer-in-the-dell type of steeple, the school’s tuition is anything but homespun. Meghan attended the academy during the 1980s, when rates were lower, but the current costs range from about $18,800 for prekindergarten up to $22,700 for sixth grade, the final year.
Meghan’s grammar school class picture hung on the white wall of her bedroom. Stars, hearts, and rainbows abounded on the matching Care Bears curtains and comforter that covered her single bed. Back then Meghan wore her dark hair in a fluffy ponytail or in two braids secured at the top and bottom of each plait.
Also hanging on her wall was the inspirational World War II We Can Do It! poster of Rosie the Riveter, with her hair neatly tucked under a polka-dotted red kerchief and the sleeves of her denim work shirt rolled up, one muscle-bound bare arm flexed to prove she’s ready to get to work on the home front while the boys are off at war.
Social awareness came early. Meghan was raised to give back, as are so many who originally come from so little. At Thanksgiving, the family bought turkeys for homeless shelters and delivered meals to patients living in hospice care. At the age of thirteen, Meghan began volunteering in a soup kitchen on Los Angeles’s Skid Row. Way out of her comfort zone, she “felt really scared” on her first day, recollecting years later, “I was young and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed.”
Meghan noticed the “quiet acts of grace” her parents would perform for those who had less, whether it was donating their spare change or even a personal acknowledgment of their shared humanity—a hug, a smile, or a pat on the back. It was a life lesson that stuck forever. Recalling how she was able to get past her fear during that first visit to Skid Row, Meghan said, “Never put yourself in a compromising situation, but once that is checked off the list, I think it’s really important for us to remember that someone needs us, and that your act of giving [or] helping [or] doing can truly become an act of grace once you get out of your head.”
Because it’s what Meghan grew up with, she was raised with a social consciousness to do what she could about a situation, or at the very least to speak up when she knew something was wrong.
Meghan had been only ten years old when riots erupted in South Central L.A. in response to the violent police beating of a black motorist, Rodney King. A year later, when the four officers who so viciously beat King were acquitted, a second round of riots, along with arson and looting—known as the Rodney King Riots—lasted for six days, spreading throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area. To ensure the children’s safety during the riots, Meghan’s school sent the students home. There was ash everywhere, settling on suburban lawns from the urban street fires.
“Oh my god, Mommy, it’s snowing!” exclaimed the naive Meghan.
“No, Flower, it’s not snow,” her mother told her. “Get in the house.”
Meghan’s activism started in 1993, when she was a twelve-year-old elementary school student, as she was watching television commercials for a social studies assignment about messaging. First up, a spot for Robitussin cough syrup that referenced “Doctor Mom,” which upset young Meghan because “it’s always ‘Mom does this and Mom does that.’ ”
Then the ad for Ivory dishwashing liquid came on the air. Meghan immediately took offense at the opening line of the voice-over: Women are fighting greasy pots and pans.
“I said, ‘How could somebody say that?’ ”
After viewing the entire lineup, Meghan concluded that “just about one out of every three commercials is going to hurt somebody’s feelings.”
As for the Ivory spot, Meghan felt the premise was sexist, and she was spurred to do something about it after two of the boys in her class started yelling at the TV screen, “Yeah, that’s where women belong—in the kitchen!”
Well!
Meghan spoke about the commercial at the United Nations on International Women’s Day in 2015. She said, “I remember feeling shocked and angry and also just feeling so hurt; it just wasn’t right, and something needed to be done. So I went home and told my dad what had happened, and he encouraged me to write letters. So I did: to the most powerful people I could think of.”
Meghan’s letter to the soap’s manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, read: So I was wondering if you would be able to change the commercial to “people.” She sent copies of it to civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred, then–first lady Hillary Clinton, and the cable TV channel Nickelodeon news anchor Linda Ellerbee. Ellerbee was so impressed that she sent a camera crew to meet Meghan.
Meghan told the Nickelodeon crew, “I don’t think it is right for kids to grow up thinking that Mom does everything.” She also encouraged others to speak up as she had done. “If you see something that you don’t like, or are offended by, on television or any other place, write letters, and send them to the right people, and you can really make a difference, not just for yourself but for lots of other people.”
A month or so later, Meghan saw the commercial again. The voice-over on the opening now said: People are fighting greasy pots and pans.
And years later as she recounted those events, Meghan told her UN audience, “It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of my actions. At the age of eleven [sic], I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality.”
Ellerbee, who provided the Nick News footage to the television program Inside Edition, wasn’t surprised that Meghan continues to be a voice for women all over the world. “It was absolutely clear that this young woman was strong in her beliefs,” she told Inside Edition. “It didn’t matter that she was eleven [sic] years old.” [On-camera in the original Nickelodeon footage Meghan tells the interviewer that she’s twelve.] “She believed in women and she believed in her own power and wasn’t afraid to reach out and say, ‘I want my power. I want my rights.’ ”
Every day after school, for ten years, Meghan would visit her father on the set of whichever show he was working on. Ironically, it was most often the sitcom with some of the most sexist jokes on prime time.
Married . . . with Children “was a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up.” Soft-core porn stars often did guest spots. “Just picture me with my curly hair and a gap in my teeth and my little school uniform with Keds on, looking up, like, ‘Hi’ at these very provocative women.” The dialogue was racy and replete with double entendres. According to Meghan, “There were a lot of times my dad would say, ‘Meg, why don’t you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your eleven-year-old eyes.’ ” Craft services is the entity in the film industry that sets up the food for the cast and crew. All of Meghan’s passions and skills—acting, being a foodie, learning how to find her key light (the main source of light on a film set)—were inculcated in that incubator of a sound stage, setting her on a yellow brick road toward her future.
“There I was, behind the scenes of a glossy soap opera and a TV sitcom, surrounded by famous actors and their glam teams, multimillion-dollar budgets, and crew lunches that always included filet mignon and enough sweets to make you think you were at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” Meghan later wrote. Of course anyone who’s been around actors, especially those who work in film, where it’s a truism that the camera makes one appear ten pounds heavier, knows that actors aren’t the ones eating all that steak and candy. As Meghan correctly noted, it’s the crew eating all that heavenly stuff.
But the opportunity to hang around so many actors—whether or not they noshed—and to watch the process of filming from the ground up whetted Meghan’s appetite for the profession. Aware of how much work it took, how long the hours were, and how grueling the pace—despite the “glam squads” with their tote bags crammed full of hair products and their
little aprons stuffed with makeup brushes of every size and shape—she would be able to choose a career as an actor with her eyes wide open.
Goodbye, Mummy
It was a late Saturday afternoon in November 1996, and the sky outside Kensington Palace was already growing dark. As usual, Harry was home for the weekend from Ludgrove. The twelve-year-old prince was napping fitfully with his head in his mother’s lap as she chatted with Simone Simmons, a close friend the princess liked to refer to as “a special lady.” The women had already enjoyed two pots of comforting herbal tea, but Simone had no words of comfort for Diana.
Simone was a psychic “energy healer” who often came to KP to smudge the rooms, cleansing them of troublesome spirits, conflict, anger, or illness. By 1996, she and Diana were conversing daily; and Simone had even taught the princess some of her healing techniques, which Diana practiced on Harry and William when they were under the weather. Both young princes were intrigued by the astrologers and spiritualists consulted by their mother.
“I don’t know, Diana,” Simone replied. “I see four people in a car and a terrible crash. I don’t know who they are.”
The previous summer, Diana had fallen madly in love with Hasnat Khan, an accomplished heart surgeon she met while visiting a friend at Royal Brompton Hospital. But coming from a traditional Muslim background, Khan was never entirely comfortable being the clandestine lover of the most famous woman in the world. Nevertheless, convinced that he was the love of her life, one night Diana asked Khan to marry her and move into Kensington Palace so he could become better acquainted with Harry and William. But Dr. Khan didn’t want to be a family man—at least being a father to Diana’s sons was not on his agenda. According to royal biographer Christopher Andersen, he found the idea of a secret marriage ridiculous. Khan’s family would only accept a Pakistani Muslim bride for him, even though Diana had traveled to his homeland several times to meet the surgeon’s relatives and immerse herself in his culture. She was studying the Koran and her closet was filled with shalwar kameez, Pakistan’s traditional ensemble worn both by women and men, consisting of a long tunic and loose, flowing pants.
American Princess Page 5