The Past is Prologue and Casts a Long Shadow

In William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (ca. 1610-11), the famous playwright coined an expression that English speakers still are fond of quoting four centuries later. In this drama, a would-be assassin named Antonio insisted, “what’s past is prologue.”[1] Antonio’s intention was to justify his and Sebastian’s desire to slay king Alonso by insisting that all of the events of the past had brought them to the present moment. This chain of events, according to Antonio, had provided them with an opportunity to act on their murderous urges. In the twenty-first century, this expression has come to mean former events strongly shape and influence the present.[2] Long after incidents supposedly fade into the shadows of history, they continue to exert an influence on contemporary people’s thoughts and actions. Nowhere is this principle truer than the sphere of ethnic relations.

The introduction of slavery to the colonies that one day would become the United States led to a clash of people groups that would shape the future country in countless ways. Due in large part to the Virginian colonists’ fondness for growing tobacco, and their perception that too few Europeans resided in the so-called New World to sustain the burgeoning enterprise, they began to import slaves in 1619 to perform the backbreaking work of plantation life.[3] This decision created a new set of challenges that continues to influence present relations.

Potential African-European marriages of the seventeenth century faced an almost insurmountable obstacle.  Intimate associations between the two ethnic groups threatened the perpetuation of slavery, so the colonies fought vociferously against this threat to the status quo. Concern also arose concerning whether the children of multiethnic marriages should be slaves or free. Virginian lawmakers addressed this matter on December 14, 1662:

Whereas some doubts have arrisen [sic] whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or ffree [sic], Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne [sic] in this country shalbe [sic] held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall committ [sic] ffornication [sic] with a negro man or woman, hee [sic] or shee [sic] soe [sic] offending shall pay double the ffines [sic] imposed by this former act.[4]

Historians recognize this legislative edict as the “first law prohibiting intermarriages” in the British colonies.[5] Other colonies soon followed Virginia’s lead, developing their own restrictive policies regarding intermarriage.[6]

            What began as a method to maintain an optimal number of slaves transformed into something more insidious. In large part, colonists ultimately divided their society along racial lines. Granted, “wide variance in . . . attitudes”[7] toward intermarriage existed in the earliest days of the British colonies. As time passed, however, each governing body gradually developed a general distaste for any intermingling between Anglos and African descendants. By 1725, colonial law had developed into a mechanism for preserving Anglo racial purity that did not dissolve entirely until Loving v. Virginia legalized multiethnic marriages in 1967.

            Although the Civil War (1861-1865) resulted in the liberation of the slaves, relations between African Americans and Anglos did not improve. The Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) saw initial gains for African Americans in the realms of political representation at the state and federal level, as well as voting rights. These advances did not continue for long, however, because during this period “both whiteness and blackness had to be renegotiated and reconstructed, since slavery was no longer a yardstick.”[8]

            The disintegration of Reconstruction principles, along with the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s, proved to be a dangerous mix. The early 1900s “marked a venomous turn in relations between blacks and whites.”[9] These hostilities came to a head during what scholars refer to as “The Red Summer” of 1919. From June to December of that year, at least twenty race riots erupted throughout the United States.[10]

            A generation later, in large part due to the tireless efforts of African Americans to draw attention to their plight, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. The new legislation guaranteed African Americans equal opportunities, but unfortunately did not change people’s hearts. Like ripples on a pond, the troubled race relations of the past continue to affect present interactions, and this environment presents challenges for reconciliation. This is one of the reasons why we study history, understand the dynamics that historical events and attitudes have shaped, and work to continue the worthy goal of reconciliation today. The past is prologue, but present relations are our responsibility.  

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[1] William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Mineola, NY: Dover Thrift Editions, 1999), 27.

[2] E.g., Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich, The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[3]Walter Wadlington, “The Loving Case: Virginia’s Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective,” Virginia Law Review 52.7 (November 1966): 1191.

[4]William Waller Hening, Statutes at Large of Virginia, vol. 2, http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol02-09.htm#bottom (accessed January 11, 2018).

[5]James Hugo Johnston, Race Relations in Virginia & Miscegenation in the South: 1776-1860, with a foreword by Winthrop Jordan (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), 166.

[6] Examples include Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. See William Hand Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland: Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland: January 1637/8-September 1664 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883), 533-34; Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay: To Which are Prefixed the Characters of the Province with Historical and Explanatory Notes, and an Appendix, vol. 1, 1692-1714 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1869), 578; William L. Saunders, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 2, 1713-1728 (Raleigh, NC: Josephus Daniels, 1886), 212; Laws of the State of Delaware, from the Fourteenth Day of October, One Thousand Seven Hundred, to the Eighteenth Day of August, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety Seven, vol. 1 (New Castle, DE: Samuel and John Adams, 1797), 108-9; James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1862-1801, vol. 4, 1725-1744 (Harrisburg, PA: C. E. Aughinbaugh Publishers, 1801): 62-63.

[7]Gary B. Mills, “Miscegenation and the Free Negro in Antebellum ‘Anglo’ Alabama: A Reexamination of Southern Race Relations,” Journal of American History 68.1 (June 1981): 18.

[8] Julie Novkov, “Racial Constructions: The Legal Regulation of Miscegenation in Alabama, 1890-1934,” Law and History Review 20.2 (Summer 2002): 227.

[9] Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor, 2008), 305.

[10] O. A. Rogers Jr., “The Elaine Race Riots,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 19.2 (Summer 1960): 142.