(Redirected from Anti-Miscegenation Amendment)
'Anti-miscegenation laws' (also known as ''miscegenation laws'') were laws that banned
interracial marriage and sometimes also
interracial sex. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have since 1863 been termed "
miscegenation". Contemporary usage of the term "miscegenation" is less frequent, and the term is today often considered offensive. In North America, laws against interracial marriage and interracial sex existed and were enforced in the
Thirteen Colonies from the late seventeenth century onwards, and subsequently in several US states and
US territories until 1967. Similar laws were also enforced in
Nazi Germany, from 1935 until 1945, and in
South Africa during the
Apartheid era, from 1949 until 1985.
United States
In the United States, anti-miscegenation laws (also known as miscegenation laws) were
state laws passed by individual states to prohibit
miscegenation, nowadays more commonly referred to as
interracial marriage and interracial sex. All of these laws banned the marriage of whites and non-white groups, primarily blacks, but often also Native Americans and Asians. Many laws also banned sex between people of different "races". Although anti-miscegenation amendments were proposed in
United States Congress in 1871, 1912-1913 and 1928,
[1] [2] a nation-wide law against racially mixed marriages was never enacted. From the 19th century into the 1950s, most US states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 to 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states did so. In 1967, the
United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in ''
Loving v. Virginia '' that anti-miscegenation laws are
unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that at the time still enforced them.
The term
miscegenation, a word invented by American journalists to discredit the
Abolitionist movement by stirring up debate over the prospect of white-black intermarriage after the abolition of slavery, was first coined in
1863, during the
American Civil War. Yet in the
Thirteen Colonies laws banning the intermarriage of whites and blacks were enacted as far back as the late seventeenth century. During the colonial era,
Virginia (1691) was the first British colony in North America to pass a law forbidding free blacks and whites to intermarry. This was the first time in American history that a law was invented that restricted access to marriage partners solely on the basis of "race", not class or condition of servitude.
[3] In 1724, the French govermnent issued a special
Code Noir restricted to
Louisiana which banned the marriage of whites and blacks in that colony.
[4] However, interracial cohabitation and interracial sex were never prohibited in French Louisiana (see
placage).
In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed anti-miscegenation laws, which were often defended by invoking racist interpretations of the
Bible, particularly of the story of
Phinehas and the "
Curse of Ham". Typically defining miscegenation as a
felony, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies. Sometimes the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of
adultery or
fornication would be brought against them instead.
While this aspect of
U.S. history is often discussed in the context of the
South,
many
northern states had anti-miscegenation as well.
In 1776, 7 out of the
Thirteen Colonies that declared their independence enforced laws against interracial marriage. Some of these laws were repealed after independence.
However, as the US expanded, similar laws were enacted by all the new
slave states as well as many new
free states such such as
Illinois[5] and
California[6]. A number of northern and western states repealed them during the nineteenth century. This, however, did little to halt anti-miscegenation sentiments in the rest of the country. Newly established western states continued to enact laws banning interracial marriage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 1913 and 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced anti-miscegenation laws.
[7] Only Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the federal
District of Columbia never enacted them.
Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the US Constitution
The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court in the 1883 case ''
Pace v. Alabama'' (106 U.S. 583). The Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama anti-miscegenation statute did not violate the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to the court, both races were treated equally, because whites and blacks were punished in equal measure for breaking the law against interracial marriage and interracial sex. This judgment was overturned in 1967 in the
Loving v. Virginia case, where the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore
unconstitutional.
Proposed Anti-Miscegenation Amendments
In 1871, Representative Andrew King (
Democrat of
Missouri) was the first politician in
Congress to propose a
constitutional amendment to make interracial marriage illegal nation-wide. King proposed this amendment because he feared that the
Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 to give equal
civil rights to the emanicpated ex-slaves (the
Freedmen) as part of the process of
Reconstruction, would render laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional.
In December 1912 and January 1913, Representative
Seaborn Roddenbery (Democrat of
Georgia) again introduced a proposal in the
United States House of Representatives to insert a prohibition of miscegenation into the
US Constitution and thus create a nation-wide ban on interracial marriage. According to the wording of the proposed amendment, "Intermarriage between negros or persons of color and Caucasians... within the United States... is forever prohibited." Roddenbery's proposal was more severe because it defined the racial boundary between whites and "persons of color"
by applying the
one-drop rule. In his proposed amendment, anyone with "any trace of African or Negro blood" was banned from marrying a white spouse.
Roddenbery's proposed amendment was also a direct reaction to
African American heavyweight champion
Jack Johnson's marriages to white women, first to Etta Duryea and then to Lucille Cameron. In 1908, Johnson had become the first black boxing world
champion, having beaten
Tommy Burns. After his victory, the search was on for a white boxer, a "
Great White Hope", to beat Johnson. Those hopes were dashed in 1912, when Johnson beat former world champion
Jim Jeffries. This victory ignited race riots all over America as frustrated whites attacked celebrating African Americans [Rust and Rust, 1985, p.147]. Johnson's marriages to and affairs with white women further infuriated white Americans. In his speech introducing his bill before the
United States Congress, Roddenbery compared the marriage of Johnson and Cameron to the enslavement of white women, and warned of future civil war that would ensue if interracial marriage was not made illegal nationwide:
"No brutality, no infamy, no degradation in all the years of southern slavery, possessed such villainious character and such atrocious qualities as the provision of the laws of Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states which allow the marriage of the negro, Jack Johnson, to a woman of Caucasian strain. [applause]. Gentleman, I offer this resolution ... that the States of the Union may have an opportunity to ratifty it. ...
Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation a conflict as fatal as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania.
... Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy"
''Congressional Record'', 62d. Congr., 3d. Sess., December 11, 1912, pp. 502-503.
Spurred on by Roddenbery's introduction of the anti-miscegenation amendment, politicians in many of the 19 states lacking anti-miscegenation laws proposed their enactment. However, Wyoming in 1913 was the only state lacking such a law that enacted one. . Also in 1913, the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, which had abolished its anti-miscegenation law in 1843, enacted a
measure that prevented couples who could not marry in their home state from marrying in Massachusetts. In 1928, Senator
Coleman Blease (
Democrat of
South Carolina) proposed an amendment that went beyond the previous ones because it required that Congress set a punishment for interracial couples attempting to get married and for people officiating an interracial marriage. This amendment was also never enacted.
The repeal of Anti-miscegenation laws, 1948-1967
The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws only began to be widely called into question after the Second World War. In 1948, the
California Supreme Court in ''
Perez v. Sharp'' ruled that the Californian anti-miscegenation statute violated the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and was therefore unconstitutional. This was the first time since
Reconstruction that a state court had declared an anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional. California was the first state since Ohio in 1877 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. In a number of states, state laws banning interracial marriage were repealed after ''
Perez v. Sharp''. But it would be nearly two decades more before these laws were struck down nationwide in 1967 by the
United States Supreme Court in
Loving v. Virginia.
In the 1950s, the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws was a controversial issue in the U.S., even among supporters of
racial integration. In 1958, the political theorist
Hannah Arendt, an emigre from Hitler's Germany, wrote in an essay in response to the
Little Rock Crisis, the
Civil Rights struggle for the
racial integration of
public schools which took place in
Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, that anti-miscegenation laws were an even deeper injustice than the
racial segregation of public schools. The free choice of a spouse, she argued in ''Reflections on Little Rock'', was "an elementary human right": "Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the
Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquesitonably belongs."
Arendt was severely criticized by fellow liberals, who feared that her essay would arouse the racist fears common among whites and thus hinder the struggle of African-Americans for
Civil Rights and
racial integration.
Commenting on the Supreme Court's ruling in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka against ''de jure'' racial segregation in education, Arendt argued that anti-miscegenation laws were more basic to racial segregation than racial segregation in education. Arendt's analysis of the centrality of laws against interracial marriage to
white supremacy echoed the conclusions of
Gunnar Myrdal. In his essay ''Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem'' (1948), Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, "social equality" including dancing and handshaking, and most importantly, marriage. This ranking was indeed reflective of the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell under the pressure of the protests of the emerging
Civil Rights movement. First legal segregation in the army, in education and in basic public services fell, then restrictions on the voting rights of African-Americans were lifted. These victories were ensured by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the bans on interracial marriage were the last to go, in 1967.
Most white Americans in the 1950s were opposed to interracial marriage and did not see laws banning interracial marriage as an affront to the principles of American democracy. A 1958 Gallup pole showed that 96 percent of white Americans dissapproved of interracial marriage. However, attitudes towards bans on interracial marriage quickly changed in the 1960s.
''Loving v. Virginia''
All bans on interracial marriage were lifted only after an interracial couple from Virginia, Richard and Mildred Loving, began a legal battle in 1963 for the repeal of the anti-miscegenation law which prevented them from living as a couple in their home state of
Virginia. The Lovings were supported by the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the
Japanese American Citizens League and a coalition of Catholic bishops.
In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving had married in
Washington, D.C. to evade Virginia's anti-miscegenation law (the
Racial Integrity Act). Having returned to Virginia, they were arrested in their bedroom for living together as an interracial couple. The judge suspended their sentence on the condition that the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years. In 1963, the Lovings, who had moved to
Washington, D.C, decided to appeal this judgement. In 1965, Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile, who heard their original case, refused to reconsider his decision. Instead, he defended
racial segregation, writing:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow,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.[8]
The Lovings then took their case to the
Supreme Court of Virginia, which invalidated the original sentence but upheld the state's
Racial Integrity Act.
Finally, the Lovings turned to the
U.S Supreme Court. The court, which had previously avoided taking miscegenation cases, agreed to hear an appeal. In 1967, 84 years after ''Pace v. Alabama'' in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in ''
Loving v. Virginia'' that:
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 to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
The Supreme Court condemned Virginia's anti-miscegenation law as "designed to maintain White supremacy".
In 1967, 17 Southern states (all the former
slave states plus Oklahoma) still enforced laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Maryland repealed its law in response to the start of the proceedings at the Supreme Court. After the ruling of the Supreme Court, the remaining laws were no longer in effect. Nonetheless, it took
South Carolina until 1998 and
Alabama until 2000 to officially remove defunct anti-miscegenation laws from their law books. In the respective referendums, 62% of voters in South Carolina and 59% of voters in Alabama voted to remove these laws.
[9]
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
! Anti-miscegenation Laws enacted in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States
|-
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
|-
! Anti-miscegenation laws repealed until 1887
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
! State !! First passed !! Law repealed !! "Races" banned from marrying whites !! Note
|-
|
Illinois || 1829 || 1874 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Iowa || 1839 || 1851 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Kansas || 1855 || 1859 || Blacks || Law repealed before reaching statehood
|-
|
New Mexico || 1857 || 1866 || Blacks || Law repealed before reaching statehood
|-
|
Maine || 1821 || 1883 || Blacks, Native Americans ||
|-
|
Massachusetts || 1705 || 1843 || Blacks, Native Americans || Passed the
1913 law preventing out-of-state couples from circumventing their home-state anti-miscegenation laws
|-
|
Michigan || 1838 || 1883 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Ohio || 1861 || 1887 || Blacks || Last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law before California did so in 1948
|-
|
Pennsylvania || 1725 || 1780 || Blacks ||
|-
|-
Rhode Island || 1798 || 1881 || Blacks, Native Americans ||
|-
|
Washington || 1855 || 1868 || Blacks, Native Americans || Law repealed before reaching statehood
|-
|}
|-
! Anti-miscegenation laws repealed 1948-1967
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
! State !! First law passed !! Law repealed !! "Races" banned from marrying whites !! Note
|-
|
Arizona || 1865 || 1962 || Blacks, Asians, Filipinos, Indians
|| Filipinos ("
Malays") and Indians (
"Hindus") added to list of "races" in 1931
|-
|
California || 1850 || 1948 || Blacks, Asians, Filipinos || Anti-miscegenation law overturned by state judiciary in
Supreme Court of California case
Perez v. Sharp
|-
|
Colorado || 1864 || 1957 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Idaho || 1864 || 1959 || Blacks, Native Americans, Asians ||
|-
|
Indiana || 1818 || 1965 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Maryland || 1692 || 1967 || Blacks, Filipinos || Repealed its law in response to the start of the
Loving v. Virginia case
|-
|
Montana || 1909 || 1953 || Blacks, Asians ||
|-
|
Nebraska || 1855 || 1963 || Blacks, Asians ||
|-
|
Nevada || 1861 || 1959 || Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Filipinos ||
|-
|
North Dakota || 1909 || 1955 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Oregon || 1862 || 1951 || Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Native Hawaiians ||
|-
|
South Dakota || 1909 || 1957 || Blacks, Asians, Filipinos ||
|-
|
Utah || 1852 || 1963 || Blacks, Asians, Filipinos ||
|-
|
Wyoming || 1913 || 1965 || Blacks, Asians, Filipinos ||
The last state to start forbidding miscegenation
|-
|}
|-
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
|-
! Anti-miscegenation laws overturned on 12 June 1967 by
Loving v. Virginia
{|border="1" cellpadding="3" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-bgcolor=#dedede-
! State !! First law passed !! "Races" banned from marrying whites || Note
|-
|
Alabama || 1822 || Blacks ||Repealed during Reconstruction, law later reinstated
|-
|-Arkansas]] || 1838 || Blacks || Repealed during Reconstrution, law later reinstated
|-
|
Delaware || 1721 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Florida || 1832 || Blacks || Repealed during Reconstruction, law later reinstated
|-
|
Georgia || 1750 || All non-whites ||
|-
|
Kentucky || 1792 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Louisiana || 1724 || Blacks || Repealed during Reconstruction, law later reinstated
|-
|
Mississippi || 1822 || Blacks, Asians || Repealed during Reconstruction, law later reinstated
|-
|
Missouri || 1835 || Blacks, Asians ||
|-
|
North Carolina || 1715 || Blacks, Native Americans ||
|-
|
Oklahoma || 1897 || Blacks ||
|-
|
South Carolina || 1717 || All non-whites || Repealed during Reconstruction, law later reinstated
|-
|
Tennessee || 1741 || Blacks, Native Americans ||
|-
|
Texas || 1837 || Blacks ||
|-
|
Virginia || 1691 || All non-whites || Previous anti-miscegenation law made more severe by
Racial Integrity Act of 1924
|-
|
West Virginia || 1863 || Blacks ||
|-
|}
|-
South Africa under Apartheid
South Africa’s
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, passed in 1949 under
Apartheid, forbade marriages between whites and non-whites. Non-whites were classified as
Coloureds, Asians and Blacks. The next year, the
Immorality Act was passed, which made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any
sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both Acts were repealed in 1985.
Nazi Germany
In
Germany, an anti-miscegenation law was enacted by the
National Socialist government in September 1935 as part of the
Nuremberg Laws. The ''Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre'' (Protection of German Blood and German Honor Act) forbade marriage and extra-marital sexual relations between persons of
Jewish origin and persons of “German or related blood”. Such intercourse was marked as ''Rassenschande'' (lit. ''race-disgrace'') and could be punished by imprisonment (usually followed by the deportation to a concentration camp) and even by death. The Nuremberg Laws were discarded after the capitulation of the Nazi regime to the Allies in May 1945.
Footnotes
"The Socio-Political Context of the Integration of Sport in America", R. Reese, Cal Poly Pomona, '''Journal of African American Men''' (Volume 4, Number 3, Spring, 1999)
"Jack Johnson and White Women: The National Impact", Al-Tony Gilmore, ''Journal of Negro History'' (Vol. 58, No. 1, 18-38, Jan., 1973).
See also
★
Miscegenation
★
Jim Crow laws
★
Nuremberg laws
★
1913 law
★
Racial Integrity Act of 1924
★
Pace v. Alabama
★
Loving v. Virginia
★
One drop rule
★
Hypodescent
★
Race (historical definitions)
★
Scientific racism
References
1. [1]
2. [http://law.wustl.edu/WULQ/82-3/p%20611%20Stein%20book%%20pages.pdf
3. [2]
4. http://www.redboneheritagefoundation.com/Chronicles/interracial_marriage_timeline.htm]
5. Steiner, Mark. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/16.2/steiner.html “The Lawyer as Peacemaker: Law and Community in Abraham Lincoln’s Slander Cases”] enacted such laws6. enacted similar anti-miscegenation laws.“Chinese Laborers in the West”Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
7. [3]
8. Tucker, Neely (June 13, 2006). “Loving Day Recalls a Time When the Union of a Man And a Woman Was Banned”. ''Washington Post''.
9. [4]
External links
★
Loving v. Virginia (No. 395) Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute
★
''Loving at Thirty'' by Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy at SpeakOut.com
★
Celebrate the Legalization of Interracial Couples
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