Loving v. Virginia's Role in Changing the Ethnic Demography of the United States

In 1958 Richard Loving (an Anglo) and Mildred Jeter (an African-American with Rappahannock heritage) held their wedding ceremony in Washington, D.C. The reason why they did not marry in their home state of Virginia did not permit African Americans and Anglos to wed.[1] Their attempt to curtail their state’s law, however, met with resistance when they returned to their Virginia residence.

            Law enforcement agents in the small town of Central Point raided their home in the middle of the night, and the sheriff arrested them. On January 6, 1959, trial judge Leon Maurice Bazile charged Richard and Mildred Loving with willfully disregarding the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia by marrying across racial lines. He erroneously claimed that Christian teachings were the reason why the statute existed in the first place: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”[2]

Bazile ordered that the Lovings serve a jail sentence of one year for their disregard of Virginia law. The judge offered to suspend the punishment if the Lovings would agree to leave the state for twenty-five years. Instead of agreeing to the judge’s demands, the Lovings decided to appeal this ruling.[3]

Nine years later, their case appeared before the Supreme Court, and, after a unanimous decision in favor of the Lovings, Chief Justice Warren opined:

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 statues, 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 discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.[4]

As a result of this decision, multiethnic marriages became legal in all fifty states, forever shelving the three hundred year old legislation that prohibited unions between couples with differing ethnic heritages.

Predictably, opponents of multiethnic marriage and the inevitable birth of countless multiethnic people swiftly decried the Supreme Court’s pronouncement, stating that Federal powers were meddling in matters that were the exclusive purview of the states. At least some of the detractors were not so much concerned with the blanket legalization of multiethnic marriages as the manner by which the practice became a universal right.[5] Nonetheless, both arguments were moot points as the ramifications of Loving v. Virginia took affect, and the percentage of multiethnic unions began to rise as a result of this decision.[6]

In the 1970s, only 1 percent of children were multiethnic. By 2013, that percentage had grown to 10 percent.[7] If various ethnic groups continue to intermingle at present rates, at the mid-century point, 20 percent of the United States will be multiethnic.[8] Since racial classifications of America’s past such as mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon no longer exist, it is not unreasonable to assume that the racial categories of the future may look different than they do today.[9] Regardless of how future Americans understand the concept of ethnicity, millions of multiethnic people will play a significant role in shaping and defining these categories throughout the twenty-first century.

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[1] Sollors, Interracialism, 28.

[2]“Judge Leon M[aurice] Brazile, Indictment for Felony,” Library of Virginia, http://lva.omeka.net/items/show/54 (accessed November 20, 2017).

[3] Spickard, Mixed Blood, 280.

[4]“U.S. Supreme Court: Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), Justia, http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/388/1/case.html (accessed November 20, 2017). The court heard the case on April 10, 1967, and issued a decision on June 12, 1967.

[5] In 1966, Alfred Avins, professor of law at Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) was concerned with what he thought to be a case of legislating from the bench. He suggested that a better route for change would be a Constitutional amendment: “If the original Constitution is out of step with present needs it can be amended in the manner prescribed in Article V” of the Constitution, which outlined the specific steps by which to achieve ratification. See Avins, “Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the Fourteenth Amendment,” 1225.

[6] Wang, “The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender,” Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/ (accessed

November 20, 2017).

[7] “Multiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers,” Pew Research Center, June 11, 2015, www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america  (accessed November 20, 2017).

[8] Lee and Bean, “America’s Changing Color Lines,” 236.

[9] Hochschild and Weaver, “No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama,” 737.