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On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional all laws forbidding interracial marriage. The case was called Loving v. Virginia (1967). The decision was unanimous. Here are Chief Justice Warren’s famous words (technical references removed):
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
Gaining the Freedom to Marry came neither quickly nor easily for interracial couples. Check out LovingDay’s fantabulous interactive map. See how the nation was an ever-changing crazy patchwork of state laws until 1967. Just as for same-sex couples today, the validity of an interracial couple’s marriage often vanished when crossing state lines. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Besides being subject to hate crimes and their marriages dissolving at the border, interracial couples could be imprisoned or banished. This is what happened to Mildred & Richard Loving, the plaintiffs in Loving v. Virginia. Virginia may be for lovers, but it wasn’t for the Lovings. Legally married in DC, the Lovings set up house in VA and were indicted a few months later. The VA judge who found them guilty agreed to waive their 1 year jail sentences if they swore to leave VA and not return for 25 years. The big softie! Here were his words of great wisdom:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Bible? Constitution? What’s the diff? Virginia held the national record for longevity of its antimiscegenation laws: 305 years.
Three cheers for love, Loving and the Lovings! May all loving couples one day enjoy the Freedom to Marry!
Cross-posted at BlueMassGroup.
15 Comments
minor league stuffWhat that Virginia judge said was positively enlightened compared to what the Missouri Supreme Court utilized as a justification for upholding its anti-miscegrenation law 80 years earlier:
?It is stated as a well authenticated fact that if the issue of a black man and a white woman, and a white man and a black woman intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid the intermarriage of blacks and whites….?
The cite: State v. Jackson, 80 Mo. 175, 179 (1883).
Kat
Just like gay people can’t have sexSo the Germans have schadenfreude – does any language have a word for something that is so absurd that it would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking? I would use that word a lot.
Great link Pam!and Happy Loving Day!
I love interactive maps. That one is the best kind, one that raises more questions than it answers. I have to wonder why MA legalized interracial marriage in 1843, but waited until 1913 to pass the infamous ban on out-of-state couples marrying.
good question, CKI only peeked at the map and noticed at 1900 that Wymoning and the Dakotas made interracial marriage illegal at 1909 or 1913.
I’m not exactly awake yet and yet I really want to know what caused a wave of bigotry to sweep from Massachusetts to Wyoming (and where else?) in 1913.
Doesn’t suprise me…that all the southern states were the last hold-outs. I certainly hope that it doesn’t take until 2067 for gays and lesbians have the right to legal marriage in all of the United States.
Wikipedia says…The Massachusetts law was at least partially due to mass hysteria over this man:
http://en.wikipedia….
He defeated the (white) former heavyweight champion in “The Fight of the Century”. The guy came out of retirement specifically to prove that white men are racially superior and his defeat sparked riots.
Johnson also married a white women and had to flee to Canada to avoid being lynched or arrested. He was wanted by federal agents for mailing a train ticket to his future wife so that she could travel from Chicago to Pittsburgh. That was interpreted as “transporting women accross state lines for immoral purposes”, a prohibition that was meant to combat prostitution.
He also opened the famous Cotton Club in Harlem that launched many of the greatest names in jazz.
me too jonnyt…but its going to take much more than hoping to make it happen.
It will take another Supreme Court rulingThe South will never allow marriage equality willingly and Congress probably does not have the constitutional authority. The supremes will have the final say.
Unfortunately Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito aren’t likely to be going anywhere for a long time.
Even Scalia, at 71 seems like he could hang on for two or three decades feeding his soul on fear and bigotry. I expect to see another Strom Thurmond clinging to his skeleton long after his flesh has become putrid and mummified.
Pretty amazing map!I love that. As I’ve always stated, the South won’t give up until there is a law to force them to. This is proof.
It’s amazing how similar looking the map is to the map of marriage equality today.
the map…
via Freedom To Marry
And even then…“As I’ve always stated, the South won’t give up until there is a law to force them to.”
Remember, that it wasn’t until 2000 that these things actually ceased to exist. They couldn’t be enforced, but they were still there in Alabama and South Carolina until 1998 & 2000 (I always forget the order, but one was 1998 and the other 2000), and even then 40% of the elecorate voted to keep them.
Kat
Scalia for 30 more years??OMG bite your tongue! It’s nice to know that Scalia is 71 years old…
It’s even nicer to know that acctuarially, there’s is a very low probability he will still be on the court for Loving Day’s 70th anniversary.
I think Alabama was in 2000then again, Alabama revels in being last in everything. I remember reading about that. I can’t remember if it was here in TN or another southern state that just within the last few weeks actually issued an apology for slavery.
But lemme guess…No reparations, right?
Kat
Correct!There was a lot of anti-miscegenation furor when Jack Johnson married his wife in 1912. In fact, that prompted Seaborn Roddenberry to try and get passed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriages.
I know; who’d ever think of amending the constitution to outlaw a certain kind of relationship, huh?