Pages taken out of a 1962 textbook supposedly used for health studies class.
The fight for civil rights and in turn the right to love was fought through the American legal system. Two cases specifically helped reverse the legal barriers against inter-racial relationships.
McLaughlin v. Florida was a case where the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a cohabitation law in Florida was unconstitutional. The law had prohibited two people from living in the same home if one of them were black and the other person white. The nullification of this law led to the Pace v. Alabama ruling which had previously said that anti-miscegation laws were constitutional. These two rulings led up to what is largely considered the landmark case on the legality of race-based marriager: Lovings V. Virgina. The Lovings case would declare the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional and put an end to all anti- miscegenation.
The practice of inter-racial relationships is almost as old as our nation’s founding. “The first recorded interracial marriage in North American history took place between John Rolfe and Pocahontas in 1614.” This practice would grow to the point that there were once 60,000+ inter-racial relationships within the American Colonies. This trend would soon be curttailed however, when the colonial lawmakers began to adopt the perception that African descendents were inferior to their white counterparts. Fear coupled with this line of thought led to the eventual establishment of Segregation and anti-miscegenation laws.
The first legislation prohibiting inter-racial relationships was passed in Virginia in 1661. Maryland would eventually follow suit in 1715 and 1717 by passing laws that forbade the cohabitation of person’s haveing different racial backgrounds. The development of slavery only fueled the fire and led to even more invasive laws.
