Interracial marriage

“ If the negroes were proportionately as numerous in the North as in the South and such sentiments prevailed, how long, with interracial marriages increased in numbers in proportion to opportunity, would there be an Anglo-Saxon 'Northern white' to have a pride of race? If with these facts before his eyes the distinguished educator sees no race danger in the social mingling of white and black people, it easily may be inferred that he sees no objection to amalgamation. ”

“ The argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of constitutionality would thus become whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages. On this question, the State argues, the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt and, consequently, this Court should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages. ”

“ If, instead of prohibiting race intermarriage, the law would compel marriage in all cases of concubinage, such a law would have a tendency to discourage race intermixture; because it is only when they marry according to the forms of law that the white husband and father is socially and otherwise ostracized. ”

“ Have you noticed in Washington—or anywhere in the South—that a negro is always seen with a girl at least one shade whiter than himself? The same instinct to rise, to get closer to the standard of the white man, whom they slavishly admire, is in the women as well as in the men. They are the weaker sex and must submit to Circumstance, but they would sacrifice the whole race for marriage with a white man. If you had left this girl to her fate, she would have gone to the devil, for a woman as white as that would have starved rather than marry a negro. ”

“ This is, first, a monstrous perversion of the facts, in that the Africans never had any marital rights or domestic institutions to be deprived of. Have men forgotten, that in their native country there was no marriage, and no marriage law, but the negroes either lived in vagrant concubinage, or held their plurality of wives as slaves, to be either sold or slain at will? ”

“ What effect will a State that prohibits miscegenation give to a marriage between a white person and Negro in a State that permits intermarriage? What effect, for instance, will Virginia give to a marriage of a white woman to a Negro man contracted in Massachusetts if the parties go to Virginia to live? If the Negro and white woman were residents in good faith of Massachusetts or of some State that permits intermarriage at the time of their marriage, their marriage will, as a general rule, be recognized as valid everywhere—even in the Southern States. ”

“ They do indeed separate the world of the white man and woman from the colored man and woman, but they fail utterly to separate the world of the colored woman from the white man.
The joint fear of the white woman and the white man is incorporated today in every State of the South in laws interdicting marriage between the races. But do these laws put an end to the sexual commerce which goes on between the world of the white man and that of the colored woman? ”

“ As for laws against the intermarriage of the races, they do not prevent what they are designed to prevent: the mixing of white and coloured blood. In many parts of the South, despite the existence of such laws, miscegenation, though decreasing rapidly, still continues. On the other hand, in the North, where Negroes and whites may marry, there is actually very little marriage and practically no concubinage. The solution of this question, too, lies far more in education than in law. As a matter of fact, the more education both races receive, the less the amalgamation. ”

“ When racial barriers are broken down and it is proper for negroes and whites to associate freely and intimately, when you—white men—receive negroes on a plane of social equality, your women will marry them, your sons will take them to wife. Shall you say to your daughter of the negro whom you receive in your home: 'He is an excellent man but—do not marry him'? ”

“ The other States which prohibit intermarriage simply declare that marriage between white persons and Negroes is illegal and prescribe a punishment for the violation of the statute against miscegenation, but do not further define the legal effect of such a marriage contract. ”

“ None of her Majesty's English or Scottish subjects, nor of any other Christian nation within that province should contract matrimony with any Negro or mulatto, under a penalty imposed on the person joining them in marriage. No master should unreasonably deny marriage to his Negro with one of the same nation ”

“ Assuming, according to the prejudices of the largest number, that the white is the superior race, ought laws to be passed prohibiting marriage between white persons and Indians, negroes, Australians, or Chinese? ”

“ The white master of the South had the black woman nurse his children. Thousands of mulattoes in the country show that the whites took advantage of the women in other ways, marriage between blacks and whites being prohibited. When it comes to according the blacks recognition as social equals, the people North and South resent even the thought. The negro woman may provide the sustenance of life for the white baby, but I venture to say that any Southern man, or Northern one for that matter, would rather see his daughter die than be married to a negro. ”

“ Will they drag down the assumed superior race, while they tend to build up the other race? Will such marriages offend the race prejudices alike of the black and white races? Or will such marriages be pleasing to the one race and displeasing to the other? Will not the violation of race prejudices by such marriages occasion unhappiness, and is there any advantage to the State to compensate the misery? What has been the result of the marriages of white women with negro men on the happiness of the wives and their offspring? ”

“ From what I have seen and heard, the higher classes of the white population now appear to be exemplary in their conduct. A natural change has also taken place with regard to the emancipated race. Formerly, a colored woman esteemed it an honor to be the kept mistress of a white man. Now, she considers it disreputable; and few such connections are found. Marriage is more common among the black and colored people. The understanding is, that marriage is right, and concubinage wrong. ”

“ When one hears, however, the question discussed, one can hardly blame a hard-working negro woman (and most of them are that) for refusing to marry if the practical result of marriage, as it affects her, is that sooner or later she will have to keep her husband as well as her children. ”

“ In England white women not unfrequently marry black men. We have ourselves known several such instances. Yet if the external appearance of the negro were such as naturally to inspire aversion, that feeling would be more strongly excited in a country of which the inhabitants are not familiarized by use to the revolting spectacle. This consideration alone would satisfy us that the real cause of the horror with which the Whites in some other countries shrink from the thought of marriage with an African is to be found, not in physical, but in political and moral circumstances. ”

“ It is the sole case, now that negro slavery has been abolished, in which a human being in the plenitude of every faculty is delivered up to the tender mercies of another human being, in the hope forsooth that this other will use the power solely for the good of the person subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house. ”

“ The marriages between whites and negroes or Indians "shall be absolutely void to all intents and purposes, and shall be so held and declared by every court at all times, whether during the lives or after the deaths of the parties thereto; and it shall not be lawful for the issue of any such marriage to be legitimated to the supposed father."—Code of N. C. (1883) , I, 514.
[1347] But see Ann. Code of Miss. (1892) , 677: The marriage of a white person "with a negro, mulatto, or Mongolian or person who shall have one-eighth or more negro or Mongolian blood" is declared "unlawful and void." ”

“ Ray Stannard Baker calls “the tragedy of the mulatto.” It seems hard, no doubt, that marriage should be impossible between a white man and a girl in whose complexion, perhaps, an eighth or sixteenth part of negro blood is entirely imperceptible; but such cases are romantic exceptions, and do not constitute a serious factor in the problem. Negroes, at any rate, will tell you proudly that the young men and women of their race, however light-skinned, hold it no hardship that their choice of mates should be restricted to their own people. ”

“ A negro marriage according to Friends’ ceremony is recorded in MS. Deed Book O, 234, West Chester. Cf. Mittelberger, Journey, 106, “The blacks are likewise married in the English fashion.” There must have been much laxity, however, for only a part of which the negroes were to blame. “They are suffered, with impunity, to cohabit together, without being married, and to part, when solemnly engaged to one another as man and wife”.... Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, 134. ”

“ I can truthfully say that in the past twenty-five years, and more, since the advent of the white man among the Klamath Indians, that most of the white men have married under the half married system, until there are no Indian marriage laws. ”

“ By the statute of Tennessee marriage is prohibited between white persons and "negroes, mulattoes, or persons of mixed blood, descended from a negro to the third generation inclusive, or their living together as man and wife." ”

“ This definition is perhaps restricted somewhat by another provision, by which "all Negroes, mestizoes, and their descendants, having one-eighth of Negro or mulatto blood in their veins, shall be known in this State as persons of color." A colored minister is permitted to perform the ceremony of marriage between colored persons only, tho white ministers are not forbidden to join persons of color in wedlock. It is further provided that "the marriage relation between white persons and persons of African descent is forever prohibited, and such marriages shall be null and void." ”

“ True, the punishment was equal without distinction of color, as it would have been in a case of larceny. But the law in prohibiting the marriage could not be constitutional, because it abridges the privileges of the citizen on account of color; it denies to the colored male citizen the equal privilege and protection of the law extended to the white male citizen—the right to marry a white woman. It also denies the white female citizen the equal privilege and protection of the law granted the colored female citizen—the right to marry a colored man. ”

“ Except very young girls, whose marriages are largely transient or nominal, the Negro women are beginning to shun marriage. This is a part of the general moral and social declension, which no unbiased observer of the race can fail to notice. Here are the numbers per thousand, male and female, of the single and married and widowed, of those over fifteen years of age, in 1890 and 1900 ”

“ Such mixtures, while probably not disastrous from the standpoint of biology, have unfortunate consequences socially. Generally the mulatto offspring are forced to remain members of the Negro group, where they are subjected to social surroundings which too often encourage disease, vice, and degeneracy. The majority of the states now have laws forbidding marriage between Negroes and whites. Both white and Negro leaders agree that race mixture ought to be stopped. ”

“ I asked her why she was not modern enough to live with a black man as she had lived with a white man. Also I said I was thinking in black-and-white, and that as marriage has a social value and her white man was of the better class, I'd like to see her marry him. Mixed marriages were mostly one-sided, colored men marrying white women; I'd also like to see white men marrying colored women, I told her. White men must have some social reason for not marrying the Negro women in whose flesh they find delight. ”

“ Justice requires that the Negro race be treated as kindly and considerately as possible, with every economic and political concession that is consistent with the continued welfare of the nation. Such social equality and intercourse as might lead to marriage are not compatible with this welfare. ”

“ In the ensuing confusion of moral ideas, of moral obligations, the male instinct gains in freedom from restraints of law, of social conventions, and reverts in consequence and to that extent to a state of nature, of natural marriage. The legal and moral codes which regulate the relations of the males of one race with the females of the same race are not applicable in regulating the relations of those self-same males with the females of the other race. Marriage in such a country has regard to the males and females of the same race, not to those of different races. ”

“ In the adjudication of claims of widows of colored soldiers, the provisions of section 4705 of the Revised Statutes are found to discriminate unjustly between white and colored claimants who resided at the time of their alleged marriage in those States wherein, prior to the late rebellion, marriages of colored people were recognized by law. ”

“ This antipathy to amalgamation with the negro, has shown itself in all of the States. Most of the Northern and Eastern State Legislatures have passed upon this question years ago. Since the coming in of the present year, Rhode Island’s Senate refused to repeal the old law forbidding the inter-marriage of whites and blacks. Thus the colored man is left to “paddle his own canoe” alone. ”