Anti-Miscegenation Statutes and Civil Rights in the U.S.

Introduction

Anti-miscegenation statutes in the U.S. had been in existence in many states since the early days of their founding. In California, for instance, the law forbidding the marriage of whites with non-whites had existed since the middle of the 19th century — and it was not overturned until the state's Supreme Court heard the case of Perez v. Sharp in 1948. Virginia had a similar anti-miscegenation statute, which was used to jail the Lovings after they entered into an interracial marriage in the 1960s. This paper examines two cases that challenged the constitutionality of these anti-miscegenation laws and how the rulings changed legislation throughout their respective states and, ultimately, throughout the country. It also considers how these statutes may have impacted Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the significance of these statutes to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Perez v. Sharp (1948)

In the case of Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711 (Cal. 1948), Perez — a Mexican-American woman — and Davis, an African-American man, applied for a marriage license in Los Angeles but were refused on the basis of the California Civil Code, which stated that marriages of whites to blacks or any other race were to be considered null, void, and illegal. The state's anti-miscegenation statute was meant to regulate the intermingling of the white race with non-white races, and the administrative decision by Sharp was simply based on the statute in place throughout the state. In other words, it was not necessarily a personal decision on his part but rather an administrative act in accordance with the law, which it was his duty to adhere to in his position as county clerk. Since Mexican-Americans were classified as "white" under California law, the county clerk, W. G. Sharp, was simply following the letter of the law in his administrative capacity. Not to justify the statute, but in his defense, California's anti-miscegenation law had been in effect for nearly a century. Perez, however, recognized the injustice of the law and filed suit because she believed it was her basic right as a Roman Catholic and as an American citizen to marry whomever her Church saw fit for her to marry.

As both Perez and Davis were Catholic and argued that the Catholic Church fully accepted their marriage, they contended that the state of California should as well. Their case was based on the argument that California's anti-miscegenation statute violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, which holds that states shall not pass laws restricting the basic rights of American citizens. In the final ruling of the case, the California Supreme Court recognized the basic civil right of Perez and Davis to marry as Roman Catholics according to the laws of their Church, and ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Perez v. Sharp. The ruling thus overturned the state's anti-miscegenation statute.

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

In the case of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), Mildred Loving — a "colored" woman — and Richard Loving, a white man, married in Virginia. The state of Virginia had an anti-miscegenation statute called the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which forbade whites and persons of "color" from marrying. Again, this statute was meant to regulate the intermingling of non-white races with the white race. The administrative enforcement of the statute in the case of the Lovings was intended to make an example for others. By the late 1960s, however, the consciousness of America had changed considerably. The ruling classes were under challenge, and the decade had become turbulent in many ways — marked by the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and RFK, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the counter-culture movement embodied by the hippie generation. Against this backdrop, the Lovings were targeted by Virginia's administration: they represented a new culture that rejected notions of racial integrity or racial purity. For the Lovings and their supporters, the state's administrators were clinging to an outdated worldview that was no longer welcome in the U.S. Virginia found the Lovings guilty of interracial marriage and sentenced them to a year in prison. The Lovings sued, and the case was taken up by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that all anti-miscegenation statutes in the U.S. were violations of the Constitution — and of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equality in particular. The Court stated that marriage is a basic civil right and that for a state to refuse marriage on the basis of race alone violates the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which concerns the administration of justice. The constitutional clauses invoked by the Court were meant to affirm that all citizens of all races have protection under the law when exercising their basic civil rights — including the right to choose whom to marry. The Court thus overturned all anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. with its ruling in Loving v. Virginia in 1967.

Conclusion

The anti-miscegenation statutes in the U.S. were found to violate the constitutional right of citizens to pursue basic civil rights — such as marriage. The ability to pursue basic civil rights also applied to education, as demonstrated in Brown v. Board of Education, and again later in the context of same-sex marriage. Equality and due process — understood as administrative justice — were central factors in all of these cases, reflecting a consistent constitutional principle that the state may not restrict fundamental civil rights on the basis of race, religion, or other protected characteristics.

References

Brown v. Board of Education. (1954). Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483

Horsman, R. (1981). Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Harvard University Press.

Loving v. Virginia. (1967). Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1

Perez v. Sharp. (1948). Retrieved from https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1361202/perez-v-sharp/

Smith, R. J. (2007). The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance. Public Affairs Publishers.