Anti-Miscegenation Laws

A Brief History of Anti-Miscegenation Laws in the United States

At the federal level, no law ever banned interracial sex or marriage. However, 37 of the 50 states included anti-miscegenation laws among their statutes at some point in their history. Moreover, anti-miscegenation laws were part of state statutes in the North, South, East, and West.

In Loving v. Virginia (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that all existing state anti-miscegenation laws were null and void. By that time, nearly all of the remaining anti-miscegenation laws were confined to former states of the Confederacy. One state, Alabama, held onto its anti-miscegenation law until 2000. Alabama's reluctance to let go of a law that could no longer be enforced stands as a testament to the potency of the miscegenation issue in the United States, especially in the Deep South.

Understanding the Origins of Anti-Miscegenation Laws in the United States

To understand how anti-miscegenation laws arose in the United States, one must acknowledge the impact of slavery and its aftermath on interpersonal and intergroup relations. Until slavery was institutionalized, sexual and marital relations between persons of different races were not typically prohibited in the colonies that eventually formed the United States. In fact, prior to the entrenchment of slavery, the concept of race was not nearly as codified as it is in modern-day America. Once the African slave trade was established, not only did race become central to the American psyche, but miscegenation became outlawed throughout most of the United States.

Soon after the end of slavery, the Reconstruction-era U.S. Congress added the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution to protect the civil rights of all American citizens. Nevertheless, as the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era descended upon the United States, some state legislatures rescinded their anti-miscegenation laws, whereas other state legislatures continued to enact anti-miscegenation laws with impunity. It was not until the United States Supreme Court explicitly invoked the Fourteenth Amendment in Loving v. Virginia that all state anti-miscegenation laws were officially declared unconstitutional.

The Connection between Anti-Miscegenation Laws and Gender

In theory, anti-miscegenation laws were supposed to be applied equally, regardless of the specific race/ gender pairings in question. However, in practice, anti-miscegenation laws often were enforced more vigorously when the “violators” were black male/white female pairs than when the “violators” were white male/black female pairs. The selective enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws as a function of specific race/gender pairings may help explain why white male/ black female marriages outnumbered black male/ white female marriages in the United States prior to the 1960s.

Despite the current controversy over the prevalence of black male/white female marriages over white male/black female marriages, it was not until the 1970s—the first full decade after Loving v. Virginia was rendered—that black male/white female marriages outnumbered white male/black female marriages in the United States. To the extent that Loving v. Virginia paved the way for a dramatic increase in black male/white female marriages, it might seem ironic that Richard Loving and Mildred, the protagonists in Loving v. Virginia, were a white male/black female couple. Then again, when one considers the [Page 38]depth of public resentment that has been directed toward black male/white female sexual unions throughout the history of the United States, it comes as no surprise that a court decision involving a white male/black female pair would lead to the end of all legal barriers against interracial marriages in the United States.

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