Bottom line I don’t see a shameful hiding away in an unwed home, especially when the grandparents announce the birth in the newspaper (I am inclined to regard those announcements as genuine although they do not prove HI birth).
A mixed race black/white baby in 1961 would something even the most liberal family would not want out in public. Even in liberal states back in the early ‘60s that was really frowned upon. Something that today would not be an issue....but 50 yrs ago would be
“A mixed race black/white baby in 1961 would something even the most liberal family would not want out in public.”
I think you are underestimating what attitudes there were in “the most liberal families” in 1960. I was actually in one at the time! The Dunhams went to the “Little Red Church,” a Unitarian Universalist church (name says it all), and the Mercer Island HS was an island of Marxist third-world liberation and diversity-loving enthusiasts, it would seem.