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Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the
controversial issue of "miscegenation," or mixture of races. It's widely
known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but
less widely known is that many other states did the same. California, for example, prohibited these marriages until 1948. In addition, politicians
made three brazen attempts to ban interracial marriages nationally by
amending the U.S. Constitution.
1664


Maryland passes the first British colonial law banning marriage between
White people and Black people—a law that, among other things, orders the enslavement of White women who have married Black men:

"[F]orasmuch as diverse freeborn English women forgetful of their
free condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves by which also diverse suits may arise touching the [children] of
such women and a great damage doth befall the Masters of such Negroes for prevention whereof for deterring such freeborn women from such shameful matches,

"Be it further enacted by the authority advice and consent aforesaid
that whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave from and
after the last day of this present Assembly shall serve the master of
such slave during the life of her husband, and that the [children] of
such freeborn women so married shall be slaves as their fathers were. And
be it further enacted that all the [children] of English or other
freeborn women that have already married Negroes shall serve the masters
of their parents til they be thirty years of age and no longer."

This legislation leaves unaddressed two important questions: It draws no distinction between enslaved and free Black people and omits marriages
between white men who marry Black women. But the colonial governments did
not leave these questions unanswered for long.
1691


The Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages, threatening
to exile White men and women who marry Black people or Native American
people. In the 17th century, exile usually functioned as a death
sentence:

"Be it enacted...that...whatsoever English or other white man or
woman being free, shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man
or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be
banished and removed from this dominion forever...

"And be it further enacted...that if any English woman being free
shall have a bastard child by any negro or mulatto, she pay the sum of
fifteen pounds sterling, within one month after such bastard child shall
be born, to the Church wardens of the parish...and in default of such
payment she shall be taken into the possession of the said Church wardens
and disposed of for five years, and the said fine of fifteen pounds, or whatever the woman shall be disposed of for, shall be paid, one third
part to their majesties...and one other third part to the use of the parish...and the other third part to the informer, and that such bastard
child be bound out as a servant by the said Church wardens until he or
she shall attain the age of thirty yeares, and in case such English woman
that shall have such bastard child be a servant, she shall be sold by the
said church wardens (after her time is expired that she ought by law
serve her master), for five years, and the money she shall be sold for
divided as if before appointed, and the child to serve as aforesaid."

Leaders in Maryland's colonial government liked this idea so much that
they implemented a similar policy a year later. And, in 1705, Virginia
expanded the policy to impose massive fines on any minister who performs
a marriage between a Native American or Black person and a White
person—with half the amount (10,000 pounds) to be paid to the informant.
1780


In 1725, Pennsylvania passed a law banning interracial marriage. Fifty-
five years later, however, the commonwealth repealed it as part of a
series of reforms to gradually abolish slavery there. The state intended
to grant free Black people equal legal status.
1843


Massachusetts becomes the second state to repeal its anti-miscegenation
law, further cementing the distinction between northern and southern
states on enslavement and civil rights. The original 1705 ban, the third
such law following those of Maryland and Virginia, prohibited both
marriage and intimate relations between Black people or Native Americans
and White people.
1871


Rep. Andrew King, D-Mo., proposes a U.S. constitutional amendment banning
all interracial marriage in every state throughout the country. It will
be the first of three such attempts.
Close-Up Of Wedding Rings On Table
Read More
Evolution of Marriage Rights in the U.S.
By Tom Head
1883
The US Supreme Court



In Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-
level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the 14th Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution. The ruling will hold for more than 80 years.

The plaintiffs, Tony Pace, and Mary Cox, were arrested under Alabama's
Section 4189, which read:

"[I]f 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 challenged the conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Stephen Johnson Field wrote for the court:

"The counsel is undoubtedly correct in his view of the purpose of the clause of the amendment in question, that it was to prevent hostile and discriminating state legislation against any person or class of persons. Equality of protection under the laws implies not only accessibility by
each one, whatever his race, on the same terms with others to the courts
of the country for the security of his person and property, but that in
the administration of criminal justice he shall not be subjected, for the
same offense, to any greater or different punishment...

"The defect in the argument of counsel consists in his assumption
that any discrimination is made by the laws of Alabama in the punishment provided for the offense for which the plaintiff in error was indicted
when committed by a person of the African race and when committed by a
white person."

Field stressed that Section 4189 applies the same punishment to both
offenders, regardless of race. This meant, he argued, that the law was
not discriminatory and that even the punishment for violating it was the
same for each offender, whether the person was White or Black.

More than a century later, opponents of same-sex marriage will resurrect
the same argument in claiming that heterosexual-only marriage laws don't discriminate on the basis of sex since they technically punish men and
women on equal terms.
1912
Market Your Firm on Constitution Day

Frederick Bass / Getty Images

Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery, D-Ga., makes a second attempt to revise the Constitution to ban interracial marriage in all 50 states. Roddenbery's proposed amendment stated:

"That intermarriage between negroes or persons of color and
Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or
any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited; and the
term 'negro or person of color,' as here employed, shall be held to mean
any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or
negro blood."

Later theories of physical anthropology will suggest that every human
being has some African ancestry, which could have rendered this amendment unenforceable had it passed. In any case, it didn't pass.
1922
Richard Barthelmass and Yaeko Mizutani

Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images

While most anti-miscegenation laws primarily targeted interracial
marriages between White people and Black people or White people and
American Indians, the climate of anti-Asian xenophobia that defined the
early decades of the 20th century meant that Asian Americans were also targeted. In this case, the Cable Act retroactively stripped the
citizenship of any U.S. citizen who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship," which—under the racial quota system of the time—primarily
meant Asian Americans.

The impact of this law was not merely theoretical. Following the U.S.
Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Thind that Asian Americans are
not White and therefore cannot legally become citizens, the U.S.
government revoked the citizenship of American-born Mary Keatinge Das,
wife of the Pakistani American activist Taraknath Das, and Emily Chinn,
mother of four and wife of a Chinese American immigrant. Traces of anti-
Asian immigration law remained until the passage of the ?Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
1928
Ceremony Of Initiation Into Ku Klux Klan
Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

Sen. Coleman Blease, D-S.C., a Ku Klux Klan supporter who had previously
served as South Carolina's governor, makes a third and final attempt to
revise the U.S. Constitution to ban interracial marriage in every state.
Like its predecessors, it fails.
1964
Civil Rights Marchers Facing Bayonets

Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that
laws banning interracial relationships violate the 14th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution.

McLaughlin struck down Florida Statute 798.05, which read:

"Any negro man and White woman, or any White man and negro woman, who
are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in
the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars."

While the ruling did not directly address laws banning interracial
marriage, it laid down the groundwork for a ruling that definitively did.

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