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In the United States, anti-miscegenation laws were passed by most states
to prohibit interracial marriage, and in some cases also prohibit
interracial sexual relations. Some such laws predate the establishment of
the United States, some dating to the later 17th or early 18th century, a century or more after the complete racialization of slavery.[1] Nine
states never enacted such laws; 25 states had repealed their laws by 1967,
when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such
laws were unconstitutional (via the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868) in the remaining 16 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.[4]

Typically defining mixed-race marriages or sexual relations as a felony,
these laws also prohibited the issuance of marriage licenses and the solemnization of weddings between mixed-race couples and prohibited the officiation of such ceremonies. Sometimes, the individuals attempting to
marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges
of adultery or fornication would be brought against them instead. All anti-miscegenation laws banned marriage between whites and non-white
groups, primarily black people, but often also Native Americans and Asian Americans.[5]

In many states, anti-miscegenation laws also criminalized cohabitation and
sex between whites and non-whites. In addition, Oklahoma in 1908 banned marriage "between a person of African descent" and "any person not of
African descent"; Louisiana in 1920 banned marriage between Native
Americans and African Americans (and from 1920 to 1942, concubinage as
well); and Maryland in 1935 banned marriages between black people and Filipinos.[6] While anti-miscegenation laws are often regarded as a
Southern phenomenon, most states of the Western United States and the
Great Plains also enacted them.

Although anti-miscegenation amendments were proposed in the United States Congress in 1871, 1912�1913, and 1928,[7][8] a nationwide law against mixed-race marriages was never enacted. Prior to the California Supreme
Court's ruling in Perez v. Sharp (1948), no court in the United States had
ever struck down a ban on interracial marriage. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court (the Warren Court) unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia
that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. After Loving, the
remaining state anti-miscegenation laws were repealed; the last state to
repeal its laws against interracial marriage was Alabama in 2000. Colonial
era

The first laws which criminalized marriages and sexual relations between
whites and non-whites were enacted in the colonial era in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, which depended economically on slavery.[9]

At first, in the 1660s, the first laws in Virginia and Maryland regulating marriage between whites and black people only pertained to the marriages
of whites to black (and mulatto) enslaved people and indentured servants.
In 1664, Maryland criminalized such marriages�the 1681 marriage of
Irish-born Nell Butler to an enslaved African man was an early example of
the application of this law. The Virginian House of Burgesses passed a law
in 1691 forbidding free black people and whites to intermarry, followed by Maryland in 1692. 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.[10] Later these laws
also spread to colonies with fewer enslaved and free black people, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Moreover, after the independence of the
United States had been established, similar laws were enacted in
territories and states which outlawed slavery.[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.[11] Anti-miscegenation laws there
continued into the early 20th century. For example, the Bengali
revolutionary Tarak Nath Das's white American wife, Mary Keatinge Morse,
was stripped of her American citizenship for her marriage to an "alien ineligible for citizenship."[11] In 1918, there was considerable
controversy in Arizona when an Indian farmer B. K. Singh married the sixteen-year-old daughter of one of his white tenants.[12]

In 1685, the French government issued a special Code Noir restricted to colonial Louisiana, which forbade marriage between Catholics and
non-Catholics in that colony.[13] However, interracial cohabitation and interracial sex were never prohibited in French Louisiana (see pla�age).
The situation of the children (free or enslaved) followed the situation of
the mother.[14] Under Spanish rule, interracial marriage was possible with parental consent under the age of 25 and without it when the partners were older. In 1806, three years after the U.S. gained control over the state, interracial marriage was once again banned.[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.
The bans in Virginia and Maryland were established at a time when slavery
was not yet fully institutionalized. At the time, most forced laborers on
the plantations were indentured servants, and they were mostly European.
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. By outlawing "interracial" marriage,
it became possible to keep these two new groups separated and prevent a
new rebellion. After independence

In 1776, seven of the Thirteen Colonies enforced laws against interracial marriage. Although slavery was gradually abolished in the North after independence, this at first had little impact on the enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws. 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. These views were tolerated in Spanish Florida, where free
people of color had rights and could own and inherit property. After
Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, he moved with his multiple
"wives", children, and the people he enslaved, to Haiti.[17] Marianne
Celeste Dragon 1795

Another case of interracial marriage was Andrea Dimitry and Marianne
C�leste Dragon a free woman of African and European ancestry. Such
marriages gave rise to a large creole community in New Orleans. She was
listed as white on her marriage certificate. Marianne's father Don Miguel Dragon and mother Marie Fran�oise Chauvin Beaulieu de Monpliaisir also
married in New Orleans Louisiana around 1815. Marie Fran�oise was a woman
of African ancestry. Marie Fran�oise Chauvin de Beaulieu de Montplaisir
and her mother Marianne Lalande were originally slaves belonging to Mr.
Charles Dapr�mont de La Lande, a member of the Superior Council.[18]

For the radical abolitionists who organized to oppose slavery in the
1830s, laws banning interracial marriage embodied the same racial
prejudice that they saw at the root of slavery. Abolitionist leader
William Lloyd Garrison took aim at Massachusetts' legal ban on interracial marriage as early as 1831. Anti-abolitionists defended the measure as
necessary to prevent racial amalgamation and to maintain the Bay State's
proper racial and moral order. 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. Beginning in the late 1830s, abolitionists began a several-year petition campaign that prompted the legislature to repeal the measure in 1843.
Their efforts�both tactically and intellectually�constituted a
foundational moment in the era's burgeoning minority-rights politics,
which would continue to expand into the 20th century.[19] As the U.S.
expanded, however, all the new slave states as well as many new free
states such as Illinois[20] and California[21] enacted such laws.

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. Anti-miscegenation laws rested unenforced, were overturned by courts or repealed by the state government (in Arkansas[23]
and Louisiana[24]). However, after white Democrats took power in the South during "Redemption", anti-miscegenation laws were re-enacted and once more enforced, and in addition Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South which
also enforced other forms of racial segregation.[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.[26] Tennessee Republicans passed a resolution supporting
Galloway's right to marry at their 1874 political convention.[27] In
Florida, the new Constitution of 1888 prohibited marriage between "a white person and a person of negro descent" (Article XVI, Section 24).[28]

A number of northern and western states permanently repealed their anti-miscegenation laws during the 19th century. This, however, did little
to halt anti-miscegenation sentiments in the rest of the country. Newly established western states continued to enact laws banning interracial
marriage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1913 and 1948,
30 out of the then 48 states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. Only Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington, D.C. never enacted them.[29]
High court decisions, 1883-1954

The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the U.S.
Supreme Court in the 1883 case Pace v. Alabama (106 U.S. 583). The Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama anti-miscegenation statute did not violate
the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to
the court, both races were treated equally, because whites and black
people were punished in equal measure for breaking the law against
interracial marriage and interracial sex.

In State v. Pass, [30][31] the Supreme Court of Arizona rejected an appeal
by Frank Pass of a murder conviction based on the testimony of his wife
Ruby Contreras Pass against him, on the grounds that their marriage was
illegal since Pass was partly Mexican and native American and Contreras
was white. Interpreting the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the court
ruled that persons of mixed racial heritage could not legally marry
anyone. The court recognized that the result was absurd and expressed the
hope that the legislature would amend the statute. 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".

In 1954, Linnie Jackson was sentenced to five years in prison for marrying
a white man, A.C. Burcham. This decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court
of Alabama. 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." The court refused certiorari and Jackson served five
years in prison.

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