Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States

[2][3] The term miscegenation was first used in 1863, during the American Civil War, by journalists to discredit the abolitionist movement by stirring up debate over the prospect of interracial marriage after the abolition of slavery.

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.

[citation needed] A sizable number of the indentured servants in the Thirteen Colonies were brought over from the Indian subcontinent by the East India Company.

[11] Anti-miscegenation laws discouraging interracial marriage between White Americans and non-whites affected South Asian immigrants as early as the 17th century.

[citation needed] For example, a Eurasian daughter born to an Indian father and Irish mother in Maryland in 1680 was classified as a "mulatto" and sold into slavery.

[15] Jacqueline Battalora [16] argues that the first laws banning all marriage between whites and black people, enacted in Virginia and Maryland, were a response by the planter elite to the problems they were facing due to the socio-economic dynamics of the plantation system in the Southern colonies.

Some historians have suggested that the at-the-time unprecedented laws banning "interracial" marriage were originally invented by planters as a divide-and-rule tactic after the uprising of European and African indentured servants in cases such as Bacon's Rebellion.

According to this theory, the ban on interracial marriage was issued to split up the ethnically mixed, increasingly "mixed-race" labor force into "whites", who were given their freedom, and "blacks", who were later treated as slaves rather than as indentured servants.

An exception was Pennsylvania, which repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1780, together with some of the other restrictions placed on free Black people, when it enacted a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state.

The Quaker planter and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. publicly advocated, and personally practiced, racial mixing as a way toward ending slavery, as well as a way to produce healthier and more beautiful offspring.

[17] Another case of interracial marriage was Andrea Dimitry and Marianne Céleste Dragon, a free woman of African and European ancestry.

Marianne's father, Don Miguel Dragon, and mother, Marie Françoise Chauvin Beaulieu de Monpliaisir, also married in New Orleans Louisiana around 1815.

Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison took aim at Massachusetts' legal ban on interracial marriage as early as 1831.

Abolitionists, however, objected that the law, because it distinguished between "citizens on account of complexion" and violated the broad egalitarian tenets of Christianity and republicanism as well as the state constitution's promise of equality.

While opposed to slavery, in a speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".

[22] Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama legalized interracial marriage for some years during the Reconstruction period.

[25][not specific enough to verify] In the 1870s and 1880s, the state of Tennessee repeatedly prosecuted and incarcerated David Galloway and Malinda Brandon for their interracial marriage.

Newly established western states continued to enact laws banning interracial marriage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Interpreting the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the court ruled that persons of mixed racial heritage could not legally marry anyone.

In a deviation from anti-miscegenation laws and interpretations in other states, the court appeared to treat Hispanics/ Mexicans as separate from "Caucasian" or white, though "French" and "Spanish" ethnicities were also referred to as distinct "races".

Jackson appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which noted that the law was likely unconstitutional, but a clerk suggested that "action might be postponed until the school segregation problem is solved."

Wright noted that interracial marriage remained uncommon and widely disapproved of in Northern states where it was legal, in contrast to widespread fears of "amalgamation" in the South.

He observed that such laws existed even where there was little chance of such marriages: Furthermore, looking at the extent of pre-marital blood tests for venereal disease, he noted: Wright suggested these laws were ineffective even in terms of preventing mixed-race births: Political theorist Hannah Arendt was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, who escaped from Europe during the Holocaust.

Instead, he defended racial segregation, writing: Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.

[39]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.

[2][3] Chief Justice Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that:[2][3] 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.

[48] As of January 23, 2025[update], two states still require couples to declare their racial background when applying for a marriage license, without which they cannot marry.

[51] Within a week the state's Attorney-General directed that the question is to become optional,[52] and in October 2019, a U.S. District judge ruled the practice unconstitutional and barred Virginia from enforcing the requirement.

[65] No brutality, no infamy, no degradation in all the years of southern slavery, possessed such villainous 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.

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.