As Simple As Black And White
August 18, 2007 – 6:15 am
The word miscegenation is derived from the Latin words miscere “to mix” and genus “kind”. Don’t get excited – it isn’t your “vocabulary word of the day”, you won’t have to use it three times in a sentence and there won’t be a quiz. However, it is a very important word to Virginians since it was used in our anti-miscegenation law that prohibited interracial marrying, cohabiting or sexual relations. The fact that any southern state had a law that prohibited the “mixing of the races” probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to most people but, if you are like me, there is one bit of trivia concerning this law that is shocking. It took a ruling by the United State Supreme Court to end the use of anti-miscegenation laws and that ruling didn’t occur until 1967.
The landmark civil rights case was Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1, 1967) and the Supreme Court used the case to declare Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional, effectively ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. As important as this case was to civil rights in the United States, I had never heard of it. I don’t remember any mention of the case in school, although I would have been in about fourth grade when it was decided. I did a little research and I discovered that the story of the Lovings was turned into a movie in 1996 titled Mr. & Mrs. Loving but I had never seen it either. It wasn’t until my recent trip to Europe that I happened upon a documentary about the Lovings on a BBC television news station. The BBC had put together the documentary to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the ruling.
Overall, when one examines the condition of our society today, it makes you proud to be an American. However, I find it a little unsettling that we are only celebrating the 40th anniversary of the end of anti-miscegenation laws in the state that I call home. In fact, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, several other states that had similar laws allowed them to remained on the books. in 2000, Alabama became the last state to remove its law prohibiting mixed-race marriage. You can read a good overview of the Lovings’ struggle on Wikipedia. Check it out!
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