Interracial Marriage: Loving V. Virginia 1967

Interracial Marriage

SOC 200

Nadine Castro

May 4th, 2017

Mrs. Miller

Abstract

Interracial marriage represents a form of exogamy—that is, out-group marriage, in which two people from different racial groups marry. An example would be a Japanese descent getting married to a Latino descent. Or any other race out there, it is just two different races getting married (Csizmadia, 2014). In the paper below I have written about the U.S. Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia 1967. It is about a couple that was a White male and an African woman that got married in the district of Columbia, but they were from Virginia and were later arrested. This case later ended state restrictions on Interracial Marriages.

Keywords: interracial marriage,

Virginia 1967 it was about Richard Loving a, white male, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman who were both from Caroline County, Virginia, got married in the District of Columbia. They knew that in Virginia it was illegal to get married if the spouses were not the same race. So, after getting married in the District of Columbia they returned home to Virginia and later got arrested for violating the antimiscegenation law, which banned interracial marriages. They were sentenced to one year in jail and the judge agreed to suspend their sentence if the agreed to leave Virginia their home, for twenty-five years and not return. Which must be sad because they loved each other but because interracial marriage was against the law in that time they had to leave (Lavender,

In 1967, sixteen southern or border states still had such restrictions in place. (The first law against miscegenation had appeared in 1661, in Maryland.) It took 306 years to remove the laws against “mixed marriages.” Ironically, twenty-four years after the historic ruling, in 1991, U.S. senator Strom Thurmond, previously a strong segregationist, successfully supported Clarence Thomas, a fellow conservative, for appointment to the Supreme Court. Thomas, a black man, and his wife, a white woman, lived in Virginia. (Lavender, 2013). I like how we have overcome this obstacle of interracial marriages over the years. And that it is not illegal anymore, because I mean we get to choose who our partner will be, we have that choice to make for ourselves. Unless you live in another country where your parent chooses who you marry, but sometimes those people don’t agree but the parents make them. And yes, discrimination is not gone, it is still out there in the world. But I think we should try and all be nice with each other and not be mean to someone because of their race, religion, etc. Because we are all different in our own