Centuries before the same-sex marriage movement, the U.S. government, its
constituent states, and their colonial predecessors tackled the
controversial issue of "miscegenation," or mixture of races. It's widely
known that the Deep South banned interracial marriages until 1967, but less
widely known is that many other states did the same. California, for
example, prohibited these marriages until 1948. In addition, politicians
made three brazen attempts to ban interracial marriages nationally by
amending the U.S. Constitution.
1664

Maryland passes the first British colonial law banning marriage between
White people and Black people�a law that, among other things, orders the
enslavement of White women who have married Black men:

"[F]orasmuch as diverse freeborn English women forgetful of their free
condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves
by which also diverse suits may arise touching the [children] of such women
and a great damage doth befall the Masters of such Negroes for prevention
whereof for deterring such freeborn women from such shameful matches,

"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."

This legislation leaves unaddressed two important questions: It draws no
distinction between enslaved and free Black people and omits marriages
between white men who marry Black women. But the colonial governments did
not leave these questions unanswered for long.
1691

The Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages, threatening to
exile White men and women who marry Black people or Native American people.
In the 17th century, exile usually functioned as a death sentence:

"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, within one month after such bastard child shall be born,
to the Church wardens of the parish...and in default of such payment she
shall be taken into the possession of the said 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."

Leaders in Maryland's colonial government liked this idea so much that they
implemented a similar policy a year later. And, in 1705, Virginia expanded
the policy to impose massive fines on any minister who performs a marriage
between a Native American or Black person and a White person�with half the
amount (10,000 pounds) to be paid to the informant.
1780

In 1725, Pennsylvania passed a law banning interracial marriage. Fifty-five
years later, however, the commonwealth repealed it as part of a series of
reforms to gradually abolish slavery there. The state intended to grant
free Black people equal legal status.
1843

Massachusetts becomes the second state to repeal its anti-miscegenation
law, further cementing the distinction between northern and southern states
on enslavement and civil rights. The original 1705 ban, the third such law
following those of Maryland and Virginia, prohibited both marriage and
intimate relations between Black people or Native Americans and White
people.
1871

Rep. Andrew King, D-Mo., proposes a U.S. constitutional amendment banning
all interracial marriage in every state throughout the country. It will be
the first of three such attempts.
Close-Up Of Wedding Rings On Table
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Evolution of Marriage Rights in the U.S.
By Tom Head
1883
The US Supreme Court

In Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-
level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the 14th Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution. The ruling will hold for more than 80 years.

The plaintiffs, Tony Pace, and Mary Cox, were arrested under Alabama's
Section 4189, which read:

"[I]f any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to
the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was
a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each
other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary
or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more
than seven years."

They challenged the conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Stephen Johnson Field wrote for the court:

"The counsel is undoubtedly correct in his view of the purpose of the
clause of the amendment in question, that it was to prevent hostile and
discriminating state legislation against any person or class of persons.
Equality of protection under the laws implies not only accessibility by
each one, whatever his race, on the same terms with others to the courts of
the country for the security of his person and property, but that in the
administration of criminal justice he shall not be subjected, for the same
offense, to any greater or different punishment...

"The defect in the argument of counsel consists in his assumption that
any discrimination is made by the laws of Alabama in the punishment
provided for the offense for which the plaintiff in error was indicted when
committed by a person of the African race and when committed by a white
person."

Field stressed that Section 4189 applies the same punishment to both
offenders, regardless of race. This meant, he argued, that the law was not
discriminatory and that even the punishment for violating it was the same
for each offender, whether the person was White or Black.

More than a century later, opponents of same-sex marriage will resurrect
the same argument in claiming that heterosexual-only marriage laws don't
discriminate on the basis of sex since they technically punish men and
women on equal terms.
1912
Market Your Firm on Constitution Day

Frederick Bass / Getty Images

Rep. Seaborn Roddenbery, D-Ga., makes a second attempt to revise the
Constitution to ban interracial marriage in all 50 states. Roddenbery's
proposed amendment stated:

"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."

Later theories of physical anthropology will suggest that every human being
has some African ancestry, which could have rendered this amendment
unenforceable had it passed. In any case, it didn't pass.
1922
Richard Barthelmass and Yaeko Mizutani

Corbis via Getty Images / Getty Images

While most anti-miscegenation laws primarily targeted interracial marriages
between White people and Black people or White people and American Indians,
the climate of anti-Asian xenophobia that defined the early decades of the
20th century meant that Asian Americans were also targeted. In this case,
the Cable Act retroactively stripped the citizenship of any U.S. citizen
who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship," which�under the racial
quota system of the time�primarily meant Asian Americans.

The impact of this law was not merely theoretical. Following the U.S.
Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Thind that Asian Americans are
not White and therefore cannot legally become citizens, the U.S. government
revoked the citizenship of American-born Mary Keatinge Das, wife of the
Pakistani American activist Taraknath Das, and Emily Chinn, mother of four
and wife of a Chinese American immigrant. Traces of anti-Asian immigration
law remained until the passage of the ?Immigration and Nationality Act of
1965.
1928
Ceremony Of Initiation Into Ku Klux Klan
Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

Sen. Coleman Blease, D-S.C., a Ku Klux Klan supporter who had previously
served as South Carolina's governor, makes a third and final attempt to
revise the U.S. Constitution to ban interracial marriage in every state.
Like its predecessors, it fails.
1964
Civil Rights Marchers Facing Bayonets

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In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that
laws banning interracial relationships violate the 14th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution.

McLaughlin struck down Florida Statute 798.05, which read:

"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."

While the ruling did not directly address laws banning interracial
marriage, it laid down the groundwork for a ruling that definitively did.