Anti-Miscegenation Statutes: Repugnant Indeed

Judge Leon Bazile looked down at Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter Loving as they stood before him in 1959 in the Caroline County, Va. courtroom. "Almighty God," he intoned, "created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." With that, Judge Bazile sentenced the newlywed Lovings to one year in jail. Their crime: Mildred is part Negro, part Indian, and Richard is white.

In Virginia, as in 15 other states (the number was once as high as 30), there is a law barring white and colored persons from intermarrying. The Lovings could have avoided the sentence simply by leaving the state, but they eventually decided to fight the Virginia antimiscegenation law "on the ground that it was repugnant to the 14th Amendment." In rare unanimity, all nine Supreme Court Justices agreed last week that it was repugnant indeed.

Defending its stance, Virginia pointed to an 1883 Supreme Court ruling that since both white and Negro were equally punished, there was no discrimination. That being so, the Supreme Court could only interfere if there were no rational basis for the state's treating interracial marriage differently from other marriages. Since scientific evidence on that point is in doubt, contended attorneys for Virginia, the court should not intervene. Chief Justice Warren swept the argument away almost contemptuously. "There can be no question," he wrote, "but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race."

In recent years, the court had several times passed up the chance to slap down interracial marriage bans. Presented squarely with the issue, however, the court was ringingly clear. "There can be no doubt," wrote Warren, "that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment. No state antimiscegenation law will be able to stand in view of that unqualified, uncompromising finding.

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