Bilge_Rat |
05-10-12 04:14 PM |
to further Steve's comments, prior to 1967, all the states of the Deep South (including North Carolina) had laws which prohibited inter-racial marriages.
This was the text of the Virginia Act which was still in place at that time:
Quote:
Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (1924)
5. It shall hereafter be 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. For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act.
|
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Racial...ty_Act_of_1924
All these laws had been democratically adopted by the states individual legislatures, all of which had been democratically elected by eligible voters, again all in accordance with the constitution of the individual states.
All these laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the case of Loving v. Virginia. Richard Loving, a white man and Mildred Jeter, a black woman were sentenced to 1 year in jail for marrying in contravention of the Racial Integrety Act.
This is what the Supreme Court said, in part:
Quote:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
I can't believe that less than 50 years later we are still having the same argument. :damn:
|