40 Years After Loving vs. Virginia
Civil Rights Case Helps End Racial Apartheid in America
It has been 40 years since the "Loving" case was concluded. June, 1967 saw the final vestiges of slavery almost entirely put to an end in America.
In a unanimous decision by the Warren Court, the Supreme Court of the United States declared Virginia’s racial miscegenation laws, as presented in this legal case, Loving V. Virginia, illegal and unconstitutional. Finally the last legal steps were completed in closing an horrific chapter in American history. The court now allowed individuals to marry on the basis of love not race.
History
The early days of the colonies in the USA actually saw a large amount of interracial marriages. According to Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker agazine, in 1784 Patrick Henry proposed to the Virginia Government that intermarriage be encouraged by the use of tax incentives. Alas, Henry’s desires never came to fruition and the long road to integrating: the society took 183 years including a bloody Civil War.
The Laws
The laws that came under scrutiny in this landmark decision were basically two separate laws:
1. The Mulatto Slave laws (hypo-descent) also called the “one drop rule” was summed up in 1900 by Booker T. Washington: “if a person is known to have one percent of African blood in his veins, he ceases to be a white man. The ninety-nine percent of Caucasian blood does not weigh by the side of the one percent of African blood. The white blood counts for nothing. The person is a Negro every time.” This law was upheld in the Kerby v. Kerby ruling of 1921.
2. The 1924 Virginia “Act to Preserve Racial Integrity” had three parts:
- No white person could marry anyone other than another white person
- It is illegal to marry outside of the state of Virginia in order to by pass the first part
- The children born from such a union are illegitimate and not afforded protections and privileges provided by the state (back to the one drop rule.)
Racism
Racism at the turn of the 20th century was rampant not just toward Black and Native Americans but also toward the large influx of European immigrants. The American society was rigidly defined along racial lines with the White race being the standard. The definition of the White race, in 1900 America, was strictly controlled. As stated under the United States Immigration Commission, 61st Congress, “Dictionary of Races or Peoples,” the definition of White excluded not only Blacks (as defined by the 99% rule), Native Americans and Asians but also “races” of people that today would be considered white. These races included, but were not limited to: Irish, Italians, French, Poles, Russians, Greeks and Slavs.
However, by 1967 most of those other races had been incorporated into the White race by statute or connotation; leaving only African and Native Americans to meet the discrimination criterion. In his lower court ruling, Judge Leon Bazile quoted the words:
"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."
The irony of those words stems from the fact that the 61st Congress in 1911 declared that individuals from France were of a different race. Judge Bazile himself had French blood via his great grandfather, Maurice Bazile, from Châtillon, France. Judge Leon Maurice Nelson Bazile was in violation of the very 1924 Virginia Act, by marrying a white woman, which he was ruling upon had he ruled only 3 decades earlier.
Results
According to Dr. Nacy John Alouise from the University of Dayton Law School the Supreme Court ruling had several results. It reinforced the 14th Amendment to the Constitution but also removed the mental concept of the 1drop rule. Yet the greatest impact the ruling had was to remove similar miscegenation laws in 15 other states. Many of those states did not immediately remove the statues they had on their books; however, no state ever attempted to bring charges upon another couple.
(Note: it was not until 2000 did the State Of Alabama remove its miscegenation laws from its books.)
