| Despite the public opposition to interracial marriage, in 1948, the California Supreme Court led the way in challenging racial discrimination in marriage and became the first state high court to declare unconstitutional a ban on interracial marriage. Perez v. Lippold, 32 Cal.2d 711 (1948). The Court pointed out that races don't marry each other, people do. Restricting who can marry whom based on that characteristic alone was therefore race discrimination. The court decision was controversial, courageous and correct: at that time, 38 states still forbade interracial marriage, and 6 did so by state constitutional provision.
Loving v. Virginia
In the middle of the night, in 1958, in the bedroom of their Virginia home, newlyweds Richard and Mildred Loving, a European-American man and an African-American woman, awakened to blinding flashlights and police. The couple was arrested. The charge: violating the ban on marriage for interracial couples. Although it was just a generation ago, that kind of law existed in Virginia and in many states.
Facing a felony conviction and the possibility of up to five years in prison, the Lovings originally pled guilty. They received a one-year jail sentence -- suspended on the condition that they leave the state and not return together for 25 years. The Lovings appealed their case and, nearly a decade after their arrest, the United States Supreme Court held that "racial hygiene" laws that existed in Virginia and 15 other states unconstitutionally sought to interfere with a person's right to marry the partner of her or his choice.
Pre-Loving, states defended laws against interracial marriage as vital to protect "the natural order of things." Virginia's anti-miscegenation law read: "All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process."
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court struck down the remaining interracial marriage laws across the country and declared that the "freedom to marry" belongs to all Americans. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967). The Court described marriage as one of our "vital personal rights" which is "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by a free people". Click here for the Loving v. Virginia decision.
Reference | |
