The History: Legalizing Miscegenation
1664: The first British colonial law banning interracial marriage between whites and slaves is enacted in Maryland. The law orders the enslavement of any white woman who marries a black slave.
"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."
1691: The Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages and places the punishment of exile on any White person who marries a person of color. While the first law of 1664 pertained only to black slaves, this new law of 1691 expanded to criminalize marriage between free blacks and whites as well.
"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... and in default of such payment she shall be taken into the possession of the 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."
1692: Maryland adopts the same policy of exile as punishment.
1705: Virginia expands its policy to impose massive fines of ten thousand pounds on any minister who performs an interracial marriage with half the amount of the fine to be paid to the informant.
1724: The French government issues a Code Noir restricted to Louisiana banning marriages of whites and blacks. However, interracial cohabitation and sex are never explicitly prohibited.
1725: Pennsylvania passes a law banning interracial marriage.
1776: With America's independence, seven out of the thirteen colonies enforce laws against interracial marriage.
1780: Pennsylvania repeals its law banning interracial marriage as part of a set of reforms intended to gradually introduce the idea of abolition within the state.
1806: Three years after Louisiana becomes U.S. territory, a law was implemented banning interracial marriage. Up until U.S. gained control over French Louisiana, interracial marriage, cohabitation, and sex were never prohibited in the state: the situation of the children interestingly was matriarchal and followed the situation of the mother.
1843: During the time of the Civil War, Massachusetts becomes the second state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law, highlighting the ideological differences between Northern and Southern states on slavery and civil rights.
1865-1877: The Reconstruction Era
Following the Civil War, the South was under occupation by federal forces and state governments were dominated by the Radical Republicans who were pressing for political rights to the newly freed black slaves.
During this time Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama repealed its anti-miscegenation laws.
1871: As the Eugenics Movement gained momentum in the United States, representative Andrew King proposed a U.S. constitutional amendment banning all marriage between whites and people of color in every state throughout the country.
1877-1908: Redemption Era
Reconstruction came to an end with the Compromise of 1877: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became President over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in exchange for the removal of Federal troops from the remaining Southern states.
With control of state legislatures, the Southern Democrats implemented laws making voter registration extremely complicated, and also passed Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, anti-miscegenation laws were reinstated in Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida.
1883: In Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
1912: The second attempt to revise the U.S. constitution to include a federal ban of interracial marriage is made by representaive Seaborn Roddenbery.
"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."
1917: U.S. Congress enacts the first widely restrictive immigration law. The 1917 Act implemented a literacy test that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language,increased the tax paid by new immigrants upon arrival, and excluded anyone from the geographically defined "Asiatic Barred Zone." This Zone included every Asian country except Japan and the Philippines.
1922: Cable Act
Growing sentiments of anti-Asian xenophobia leads to the Cable Act which removed the citizenship of any U.S. citizen who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship," which primarily included Asian Americans considering the racial quota of the time.
1928: Senator Coleman Blease, a Ku Klux Klan supporter who had previously served as South Carolina's governor, makes the third and final attempt to revise the U.S. Constitution to ban interracial marriage in every state. It fails.
1948: The California Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp ruled that the state law banning miscegenation violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was the first instance since Reconstruction that a state court deemed an anti-miscegenation law to be unconstitutional. This ruling had a butterfly effect and anti-miscegenation laws were repealed or overturn in state after state, all across the country besides the South.
1964: In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that laws banning interracial sex violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. McLaughlin removes the Florida Statue 798.05 which states:
"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."
1967: In Loving v. Virginia, the U.s. Supreme Court unanimously overturns Pace v. Alabama (1883), and rules that state bans on interracial marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren:
"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy ...
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
2000: Alabama becomes the last state to officially legalize interracial marriage.
Though every other state in the U.S. had legalized interracial marriage thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia (1967) the Alabama State Constitution contained an unenforceable ban in Section 102:
"The legislature shall never pass any law to authorise or legalise any marriage between any white person and a Negro or descendant of a Negro."
On November 7th, 59% of voters supported the removing of Section 102 leading to the legalization of interracial marriage.