Lost Black History
By Don Valentine
Miscegenation is defined by Webster’s as “especially: marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a White person and a member of another race.” Historical notes of White cohabitation with other races dates back to the arrival of the English pilgrims. It would be safe to presume other interactions with the White explorers preceded the English (Vikings arrived in 1021 A.D.) The Christian Science Monitor chronicled, “The first recorded interracial marriage was in 1614 when Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan chief, was wed to the White English settler John Rolfe.”
Interracial relationships and later marriages were an unanticipated irritant of free slave labor. This dalliance was illegal in all but 9 states. An article by the Jim Crow Museum [motto: “Witness, Understand, Heal”] delineated the argument against miscegenation; “The fear of interracial marriage was a major argument used to support racial segregation during the Jim Crow Era. Segregationists claimed that “social equality” would lead to interracial sexual unions between Black men and White women — of course, White men had sexual access to Black women from slavery through the 1960s.”
That article explains the fear of some Whites. “The segregationists claimed that Whites were superior to Blacks and other races in every important way — culturally, socially, intellectually, physically, and morally. Blacks were seen as a third-rate race whose inferiority was immutably stamped by God or nature. The intermingling of the races would lead to disaster: White women, it was argued, would produce inferior mongrel children — with the ambition and desire of Whites but the animal-like qualities of Blacks.” That is a disgusting opinion about your fellow man that still permeates in the hearts of a few in our community.
The Supreme court took up the case of Loving vs. Virginia to give the opinion that interracial marriages were legal under our Constitution. In a 9-0 decision Justice Warren wrote, “In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally “odious to a free people” and were subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause.” The historychannel.com presented a concise narrative of the case, “Loving v. Virginia was a Supreme Court case that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage in the United States. The plaintiffs in the case were Richard and Mildred Loving, a White man and Blackwoman whose marriage was deemed illegal according to Virginia state law. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court…” Dr. King elucidated the court’s opinion perfectly, “Individuals marry, not races.
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