CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANITY, TRADITION, AND MIXED RACE MARRIAGES
For the longest time, unquestionable religious traditions and conventions supported Anti-Amalgamation laws criminalizing interracial marriages. According to the religious doctrine underlying these prohibitions, marriages between whites and races of color were against God's natural order and were immoral. To these same religious fundamentalists, abolition and women's suffrage were attacks on God's natural order. Violence usuallty followed when religious radicals' values were threatened.
In 1664 Maryland becamethe first state to outlaw mixed race marriages. In less than sixty years, another six states passed similar laws. In 1843, Massachusetts, which has been a pioneer regarding both slavery abolition and gay rights, was the first to repeal such a law. The Massachusetts legislature decided that such laws were an assault on human dignity and a denial of equal rights under the Constitution. Forty states have had such laws at one time. In the other states fear, bigotry and violence succeeded in keeping whites, Asians and blacks from marrying each other.
In 1863 a pamphlet appeared in the south that coined a new word, "Miscegenation". It was derived from two latin words that meant "mixed races". It was entitled "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro". The pamphlets aim regarded the producing of children by mixed marriages, which was considered immoral and against God's natural order. Race mixing, even without offspring, was considered unnatural by these same people. The pamphlet's argument favored the interbreeding of races until they were indistinguishable. It claimed that this was the goal of the abolitionists, the Republican party and the Lincoln administration. In those days, and up until the Civil Rights movement, traditionalists and religious fundamentalists were mostly Democrats. Those roles reversed during the 1960s.
But the tract was a hoax written by David Goodman Croly, managing editor of the New York World, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman, a New York World reporter. It was written to discredit Lincoln and the abolitionist movement. For a long time afterward traditionalists accused people who ended slavery of advocating Miscegenation and the destruction of the white race. Supporters of the Civil Rights movement were attacked in the same manner. The conspiracy theories even had white religious fundamentalists go as far as accusing the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as being part of a Communist plot to destroy the US through miscegenation
After slavery was abolished mixed race relationships became more common. But laws created and supported by fundamentalists prohibited them from marrying. In the Bible belt, traditionalists and fundamentalists made sure mixed race marriages were criminalized and punishable by harsh penaltes. These offenses were made felonies. They were called "Miscegenation Laws" and were similar to the South African Immorality Act and were upheld by the US Supreme Court for a time.
The first challenge to these laws came in 1881. Tony Pace, a black, and Mary Cox, a white, were indicted in a circuit court for living together in a state of adultery or fornication under Section 4189 of the Alabama Code.
That code declared:
"If any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years.'
They were tried convicted and each was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary. An appeal was made on he basis of the fourteenth amendment's clause that made it unlawful for any state to 'deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.'. The original holding of the circuit court was affirmed by the 1883 US Supreme Court in Pace vs Alabama. The ruling opinion by Justice Fields saw nothing wrong with felonizing an act only when done by people of different races. If the races were the same, it was not a felony. This is the identical attitude taken by the State of Texas in its sodomy laws. It was lawful for heterosexual couples to engage in anal intercourse but it was an offense if engaged by two men. As you know, this law was overturned on privacy and equal protection grounds.
By the 1940s only two of the original 40 states with antimiscegenation laws had removed them. 38 states had laws forbidding such marriages and 6 of them were by constititional provision~! (Sound familiar~?) In 1948, in the midst of a majority opposition, the California Supreme Court struck down its ban on interracial marriage as unconstitutional. In Perez v. Sharp the court ruled:
"A member of any of these races may find
himself barred from marrying the person of his
choice and that person to him may be
irreplaceable. Human beings are bereft of worth
and dignity by a doctrine that would make them
as interchangeable as trains."
By the reasoning of the religious fundamentalists, these were activist judges. But these are people who dont understand the design of the US Government or the intent of the Constitution. Like many rulings opposed by the sleeping majority, the ruling was courageous and correct in a time of controversy.
The year was 1958. Richard Loving was white and Mildred Jeter was black. They fell deeply in love and wanted to get married. But because in 1958 Virginia still outlawed interracial marriages, they drove to Washington, DC and were married. Virginia's statutes criminalizing interracial marriage carried a punishment of one to five years so it was impossible to marry in Virginia. After they married they moved into a home in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Jeter was immediately arrested. Within a year they were both prosecuted and convicted under Virginia's miscegenation law, each receiving a sentence of a year in jail. The Judge promised to suspend the sentence if the couple would leave the state for 25 years.
In his opinion the trial judge used religious rhetoric, which has no place in a court's holding, and stated:
"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 marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
The Lovings took the deal but it wasnt over as far as they were concerned. They moved to Washington, DC and initiated an appeals process. On November 6, 1963, they petitiioned the state trial court to strike the ruling on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Because action wasnt taken by the state trial judge, the Lovings filed a class action suit on October 28, 1964 at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
In January, 1965, the state trial judge denied their motion to vacate their sentences. Once again a fundamentalist judge invoked God's intenton to separate the races. Immediately, they filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge US District Court continued their case in order to provide the Lovings with the time needed for them to present their case firstly to that Supreme Court of Virginia. The Lovings would challenge constitutionality of the law banning mixed race marriages there.
The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutioality of the law, but that wouldnt be the end of it either. Finally, in June of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down the Virginia statues as unconstitutional. By the power of that ruling, 16 states, moslty Bible Belt states, had to end all enforcement of antimiscegenation laws. The US Supreme Court ruled:
the "freedom to marry" belongs to all Americans; marriage is one of our "vital personal rights" and the right to marry is "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by a free [people].
This same constitutional power was felt by the states that still had sodomy laws in the Lawrence v. Texas decision by the US Supreme Court.in 2003. The 14th amendment has made the conservative's strategies very limited in the rights movements.
By 1970, twelve states, mostly Bible Belt states, still had these unenforceable miscenegation laws on their books. They were very stubborn and fundmentalist. The last one to be removed wasnt removed until November of 2000 in Alabama. Strange indeed was it was done by ballot referendum. And 40% of Alabamans still voted against taking the laws off the books.
Salon.com commented after that election result:
"In November 2000, after a statewide vote in a special election, Alabama became the last state to overturn a law that was an ugly reminder of America's past, a ban on interracial marriage. The one-time home of George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. had held onto the provision for 33 years after the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Yet as the election revealed -- 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep the ban -- many people still see the necessity for a law that prohibits blacks and whites from mixing blood."