The Politics of Race & Marriage - Loving Conquers The Courts

Politics of Marriage

Coming from three generations of intermarriage, it's sometimes hard to imagine a time when interracial marriage was illegal and punishable with jail time. But, it wasn't that long ago when interracial marriage carried serious penalties. Below is a summary of the events and the case that changed the politics of marriage forever.

The Events

Richard (White) and Mildred (Black) Loving decided to get married in 1958 in Washington D.C. Although they lived in Virginia, their home state had an antimiscegenation law, which clearly indicated that interracial marriages were illegal.

"Punishment for marriage.---If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years."

After they married, they lived together in Virginia, but soon after the marriage, in 1959, they were prosecuted and convicted of violating the law. They were sentenced to one year in jail unless they agreed to leave the state and not return for a period of 25 years. In the Judge's opinion:

"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."

Having no choice, they returned to Washington D.C. in 1963 where they promptly initiated a suit challenging the constitutionality of the antimiscegenation law.

In March of 1966, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the law, but in June of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided the law was unconstitutional.

In 1967, just over 37 years ago, the 16 states with existing antimiscegenation laws were forced to eliminate them. Many other states had enacted such laws in previous years, but had repealed them by the time of the Loving decision.

The Virginia law prohibited the intermarriage of "whites" with "coloreds" and American Indians, and assumed authority for assigning multiracial people to one of these groups depending upon the degree and type of mixture.

A White person was defined as someone without a trace of anything but "Caucasian blood." The sole exception was a person who had 1/16 or less of Native American ancestry - an exception that protected some wealthy and well-respected descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.

A Black person was anyone with any "ascertainable" negro blood, the classic expression of the infamous "one-drop-rule".

An American Indian was anyone with at least 1/4 Indian ancestry, or, anyone with at least 1/4 Indian blood and no more than 1/16 "Negro" blood and who was also a member of an Indian tribe.

The 25th Anniversary of the Loving Decision was commemorated by AMEA in 1992 at the Loving Conference. A movie for television was made in 1996 dramatizing the story of the Lovings, starring Timothy Hutton, Lela Rochon and Ruby Dee. For more information about this film, here is the link to the Internet Movie Data Base: Mr.& Mrs.Loving.

The Case - Excerpts from the Actual Text

Loving Vs. Virginia
Argued April 10, 1967
Decided June 12, 1967

Virginia's statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications held to violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment

The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

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.

These convictions must be reversed. It is so ordered.