‘Even as a child Meghan would stand up for what she believed in’

It was late into the night and the group of schoolgirls were chatting about the future and what they hoped to achieve when they left school. Meghan was aiming big, declaring that she was going to be the first female president one day.

Nobody doubted her or told her to pipe down. Meghan Markle already had form as an intelligent, articulate young woman for whom empathy seemed to come naturally. That’s why she was sat on the floor with her fellow pupils at a school retreat and why they believed she could end up at the White House. “She was always so poised and well-spoken,” said one.

Meghan had been the first to be chosen as a team leader at the Kouros Retreat organised by her high school, Immaculate Heart, in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, and held over four days at the Holy Spirit Retreat Centre in the upmarket neighbourhood of Encino. These breaks were popular throughout Catholic schools and colleges in the US.

Although there was a religious element to the four-day break, the emphasis was much more on having time for the young women to talk openly about their problems and concerns without having to worry about dashing off to the next class or what grade they might be given for their homework.

Aged 17, Meghan was one of six seniors leading groups of eight in daily discussions, trying to make sure every girl had the chance to express themselves. Her ability to share thoughts and feelings was of particular benefit to one girl, who struggled with her shyness and was the quietest and most reserved of the group. Meghan wrote her a supportive note in her distinctive and immaculate handwriting.

Another of Meghan’s tasks was to give a half-hour presentation in front of everyone in which she talked in a mature way about her own life journey. It was a rare chance to share some personal feelings about her parents’ divorce and finding her identity as a biracial girl.

Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle split up when she was two, although they were not formally divorced until she was seven. Doria had been brought up in LA, although her family had driven 2,300 miles across the country from Cleveland, Ohio, when she was a baby to seek a better life. Tom hailed from Pennsylvania, which Meghan described as a “homogenised” community where “the concept of marrying an African-American woman was not on the cards”.

An interracial marriage was a bold move back in 1979 when they married two days before Christmas.

Tom, 35, a lighting director on the daytime soap, General Hospital had met Doria, 12 years his junior, six months earlier when she was a trainee make-up artist on the show. He already had a teenage daughter, Yvonne, who later changed her name to Samantha, and Tom Jr from his first marriage and they were living with him.

Married life began in Woodland Hills, a pleasant, middle-class, predominantly white neighbourhood in the area of Los Angeles known as the Valley. Meghan summed it up: “It was leafy and affordable. What it was not, however, was diverse. And there was my mom, caramel in complexion with her light skinned baby in tow being asked where my mother was since they assumed she was the nanny.”

With hindsight, this was not the best location for the new family. Doria was just 23 and not faring so well. She had to cope with not only looking after a small baby but also maintaining the peace in a fractious household. The two older siblings, who have been paid many times for interviews, have often changed their accounts of life in the Markle household, but one fact was clear – they were teenagers and Meghan was a newborn.

For the sake of their young child, Tom and Doria stayed on reasonable terms when she moved out taking Meghan with her. There was never a question of her father not being fully involved in their child’s upbringing. Whatever their feelings towards each other, they were determined that their daughter’s world would be a safe and happy one.

Tom tried his best to ensure she felt no different from any other little girls her age. Meghan revealed in her now-famous blog, The Tig, that when she was seven she had her heart set on a family of Barbie dolls for Christmas. They were called the Heart Family and consisted of mum, dad and two children, but there as a problem: the “perfect nuclear family” as Meghan described it, was only available in all black dolls or all white ones.

Tom was not happy with that so marched into a Toys R Us store in West Hollywood and carefully customised a set just for his daughter. As he saw it, she was not going to be disadvantaged by the colour of her skin, even if it was just a Christmas present.

On Christmas day Meghan happily unwrapped her own Heart family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll and a child in each colour. This was her reality. It was a sweet gesture for his daughter but also a serious one that she would never forget. The question of her racial identity was one that would absorb Meghan as a child and as an adult.

Doria, who had moved into a spacious second floor apartment in South Cloverdale Drive in South Central LA, was determined that Meghan would grow up aware there was more to the world than her little patch of Los Angeles. She was working for a travel agency that opened up opportunities to take her daughter with her on some wonderful holidays. While there was sun and beaches, culture and laughter, there were the occasional more sobering experiences of those less fortunate.

She took her to see the slum areas of Jamaica, a genuine eye opener for a little Californian girl who could scarcely comprehend the unbearable poverty of what she was seeing. Her mother had soothing words: “Be aware but don’t be afraid."

In Oaxaca City, in southern Mexico, she saw for herself poor street children selling sweets to earn a few pesos to buy food. It was a stark dose of reality that illustrated the unfairness in the world.

Back in LA, she was sent home from primary school, aged 10, when rioting erupted and the whole of South Central LA resembled a war zone. It followed the notorious incident when police officers were caught on film giving a savage beating to a black motorist called Rodney King. His injuries included skull fractures, broken bones and teeth and permanent brain damage.

Meghan never forgot that day: there was ash everywhere, settling on lawns and porches in her street. She shouted to her mother: “Oh my God Mommy, it’s snowing.” Doria responded firmly: ‘It’s not snow. Get in the house."

Incredibly, next March will mark the 30th anniversary of this notorious incident – a depressing reminder of what little progress society had made in the intervening years before the killing of George Floyd.

Even at a young age, Meghan impressed her teachers at the Hollywood Schoolhouse as a girl who would fight for the underdog. The current headmistress, Ilise Faye, observed: “She would stand up for what she believed in and she was the leader among her friends.”

That leadership was evident when she heard that one of the classmates was upset about the Gulf war. The boy in question was in tears because his elder brother was in the military and was due to fly out to the Middle East. Meghan helped to organise a protest at her school against the conflict, carrying a homemade placard that stated, "Peace and Harmony for the World".

The following year, aged 11, Meghan’s class had a social studies assignment that involved watching and commenting on various assignments. First up was one for Robitussin cough syrup, which suggested it was “Recommended by Dr Mom”. Meghan’s response was what about “Dr Dad”.

She clearly hated the popular idea that mom did everything and was even more outraged by the advertisement for Ivory Clear dishwasher liquid. It began: “Women are fighting pots and pans…”

Encouraged by her dad, she dashed off a letter to the manufacturer Proctor & Gambol suggesting they change it. She sent copies to Hillary Clinton, the renowned civil rights lawyer, Gloria Allred, and to broadcaster Linda Ellerbee, host of Nick News on the Nickelodeon cable channel.

Meghan secured a famous victory and the ad was changed to “People are fighting…” She appeared on TV for the first time, telling young viewers of Nick News: “If you see something you don’t like or are affected by on television or any other platform, write letters and send them to the right people and you can make a difference.” It could almost have been the grown-up Meghan speaking in 2020.

Linda Ellerbee did not forget the gap toothed, freckly, articulate president-in-the-making: “It didn’t matter that she was 11 years old. She believed in women and in her own power. She wasn’t afraid to reach out and say: ”I want my power. I want my rights."

Meghan’s precocious ability to reach an audience did not mean she was immune from personal anxiety about identity, perfectly illustrated a year later when she was confronted with a dilemma at Immaculate Heart, where she had recently enrolled. She had to fill out a census form in class. There were four choices for ethnicity, white, black, Hispanic or Asian.

Meghan didn’t know what to do. She asked her teacher who looked at her light-toned skin and told her to check Caucasian. But Meghan was uncomfortable with that advice because, in her eyes, it was choosing one parent over another. Imagine looking Doria in the eye if she had done as suggested. Instead she put down her pen and left it unanswered, heartbreakingly: “I left my identity a blank – a question mark, an absolute incomplete, much like how I felt.”

During lunch break she never knew where to sit. Should she spend the hour with the black girls, or the white girls, with the Filipino or Latino girls? Mostly she avoided the issue by joining every lunchtime group or society going, making do with a sandwich during French club or giving her views on the next important question for the student body. It helped that she was intelligent and articulate although there was a chance she was becoming a little earnest.

Her identity was never a matter of uncertainty for her first boyfriend, Joshua Silverstein, with whom she had an innocent holiday romance during a summer camp organised by the Agape church in Santa Monica which they both attended. 

Joshua, who would become a well known stand-up in Los Angeles, was also biracial. He did not need to see which box Meghan might or might not have ticked to understand her ethnicity: “When I saw Meghan, I saw a lighter-skinned brown person with curly hair and freckles and fuller lips. And I was like, that person is a person of colour.”

Meghan gave her first serious speech when she spoke at her middle school graduation ceremony at Immaculate Heart in June 1995. Wearing the traditional white cap and gown, she thanked the school graciously, singling out the religious lessons that had helped her and others to “develop spirituality in our lives” and the classes that had taught them “a deep compassion to those who suffer from the Aids virus”.

She concluded with a rallying call for her schoolmates: “We will always carry the spirit of Immaculate Heart with us. And always and forever as women of great heart, dedicate ourselves to making it a better world.”

It was a masterful effort for someone not yet 14. The last sentiment was one she has endeavoured to follow throughout her life and that she could have included in almost any speech she has made since.

This is an extract from ‘Meghan Misunderstood’, which is published on 12 November. Preorder here

Tomorrow: A charity kitchen in Toronto, a refugee camp in Rwanda and a standing ovation led by the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon