Under the anti-miscegenation laws, Obama Sr. would have been charged with white slavery

[IndianaGreen]

for marrying Obama's mother. This what happened to boxer Jack Johnson, charged under the Mann Act (the white slavery act), for traveling across state lines with his white wife. Does the film The Great White Hope ring a bell?

Laws Against Mixing Races

Progress -- which was God's great work, or was perhaps the real name of God -- could be defeated by inter-racial marriage.

The opponents of mixed marriages dispensed with fine distinctions; they opposed any mixing of races or genes, which they called miscegenation. And they wrote laws to ban the practice.

In all, 30 states passed anti-miscegenation laws that stayed on the books until the advent of the civil rights movement. Of these, 16 kept their laws on the books until the Supreme Court threw them out in 1967: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Another 14 states passed anti-miscegenation laws, but repealed them in the 1950s or 1960s: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

For example, Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 made it "unlawful for any white person in this state to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian." In writing the statute, one of the challenges that the Virginia racists faced was their own proud history. According to a publication from the Registrar of the State Bureau of Vital Statistics, the law had to take account of "the desire of all to recognize as an integral and honored part of the white race the descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas." Because of the Pocahontas loophole, you could have a little Indian blood (one great-great-grandparent) and still be counted as white. But "every person in whom there is ascertainable any negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person."

The law automatically voided all marriages between whites and blacks. The law prohibited leaving the state to get married and then returning, and specified that the "fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage." The penalty was stiff: "If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years."

Virginia judges continued to defend anti-miscegenation laws for decades. In 1955, the State Supreme Court of Appeals decided that the laws served legitimate purposes, including: "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride."

http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap07.html

[FrenchieCat]

1. He would have also been a slave while slavery was legal.

He would have also not been allowed to drink from the "White" only Fountain.
He would have also had to sit in the back of the bus.
He would have also not been allowed to vote.
He would have also been in danger of being lynched if he lived in the South.
He would have also not been allowed to enter the White House through the Front door.
He would have also not been allowed to buy a house in many places.
He would have also not been allowed to attend Harvard.
He would have also been counted as 3/5 of a human.

That is why the NAACP was founded.
That is why people marched,
and people were jailed,
and people died.......

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Keith just stated that there were laws like that until 1967 in 14 states!!!!

:wow:

[IndianaGreen]

3. Shocking!

And defenders on anti-miscegenation laws used the Bible as justification for them. LDS barred Blacks from the priesthood (which is open to all males) on the basis that Blacks carried the "Mark of Cain."

[FrenchieCat]

5. and again......

That is why people organized,
and people marched,
and people were jailed,
and people died.......


What is your point?
That Black people have been treated like shit for hundreds of years?
That at one point it was stylish for some to wear hoods and go Darkie Hunting?

Are you telling us anything new? :shrug:

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Racist Ignorance..

[redstate_democrat]

7. I don't believe there was any religious reason for miscengenation laws

The Loving v Virginia case explicitly said it was all about white supremacy. There was no law against blacks marrying Asians or Hispanics. Just whites. Whites couldn't marry Asians or Hispanics either. The white race was to be kept "pure".

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Most "laws" that use the Bible and religion for justification are not REALLY done for

religious reasons. They were all done for economic and/or political reasons. That is true of the Inquisition, the Crusades, it includes every invasion of every country in order to"convert the heathens". To me it seems that all crusaders, evangelizers and missionaries are sent out to increase the numbers of the believers in their religion. In truth, it was not to "save souls", but to increase the political power of that religion by increasing its membership.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. Bill Maher on Mormonism...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xqNbZKIQUs

[FrenchieCat]

8. I am 1/2 Black and 1/2 White,

and I was born in 1958.

In 50 years, we've come a long way....but it wasn't easy.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Yes. It has been quite a struggle. It seems that progress, true progress always takes

some sort of battle. Society appears to have a tendency toward inertia, and it must be dragged kicking and screaming into its next incarnation. Enlightenment does not come cheaply.

[FrenchieCat]

12. Yep....many battles won inch by inch eventually win the war......

progress is neither cheap nor easy.....as you say.

and the cost is usually more than it should ever be.

[Whoa20]

4. I wonder what Barack Sr.

would think if he could be alive today to see his son elected President.

[NorthernSpy]

13. Anti-"miscegenation" laws were a politically-motivated attempt to redefine marriage...

... in order to achieve rightwing social-engineering goals.


It's important to note that such laws stand out as abnormal artifacts of time and place. Traditional Western conceptions of marriage did not refer to race or ethnicity, and so these laws were innovations.


This is why interracial marriage and same-sex marriage are not really analogous, and the issues surrounding each are not the same.

[SweetieD]

14. And under slavery laws I would have been a slave, under jim crow laws

I wouldn't have had access to the same areas whites had access too.

I don't get what the point of this post is?

[political_Dem]

15. It is another cheap shot at Black folks based on the results of a shoddy poll.

Solutions to heal the divide between the communities and for outreach in communities of color would have been better than pointing the finger once again.

[NorthernSpy]

16. Another thing: people got thrown into prison because of the interracial marriage laws...

It wasn't a matter of being handed a piece of paper with the words "domestic partnership", instead of "marriage license". People trying to marry outside their racial designation were actually deprived of liberty as a punishment -- not denied a particular concession.