Calendar photo caption: Hands of Mildred and Richard Loving on their kitchen table in Virginia. Interracial marriage was illegal in 24 states when they were married in 1958. (Estate of Grey Villet)
The false narrative of racial difference created to justify genocide and slavery in America found its most consistent and dramatic expression in bans on interracial marriage and romance.
Bans on "race mixing" were part of the legal landscape across the country, not just in the South. These so-called "anti-miscegenation" laws first appeared in the American colonies, and during the 19th century, 38 states had laws that banned and even criminalized interracial marriage.
When the Civil War started in 1861, 15 states outside the South banned interracial marriage. Eight Union states continued to enforce anti-miscegenation laws even after the war began. Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Ohio had passed laws banning interracial marriage by the time the war ended in 1865.
After Emancipation, white people's fears that an influx of newly freed Black people would upset the racial hierarchy led to the proliferation of these bands nationwide. Between 1866 and 1950, as many as 19 states outside the South passed or strengthened bans on interracial marriage.
In 1943, to aid enforcement of its existing interracial marriage ban, California's all-white, all-male legislature passed a law requiring that the race of the applicants be recorded on marriage certificates. Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota also enacted interracial marriage bans in the 20th century.
Anti-miscegenation laws were not struck down until 1967, when the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declared that interracial marriage bans violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
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