Happy Loving Day

Some interesting stuff from lovingday.org:

What is Loving Day?

Loving Day is an educational community project. The name comes from Loving v. Virginia (1967), the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. Loving Day celebrations commemorate the anniversary of the Loving decision every year on or around June 12th.

The Loving Day legal map is particularly interesting. Since each state had its own intermarriage laws, a kid could become a bastard simply by crossing state lines. If you click on the states where interracial marriage was illegal, you can read the laws banning such unions. Here's a quote from the Pennsylvania Statute, circa 1725:

[Section VIII.] And it be further enacted...That if any white man or woman shall cohabit or dwell with any negro under pretense of being married, such a white man or woman shall forfeit and pay the sum of thirty pounds or be sold for a servant not exceeding seven years by the justices of the respective county court, and the child or children of such a white man or woman shall be put out to service as above directed until they come to the age of thirty one years.

The law goes on to state that the punishment for "free negroes" who married whites in PA was slavery for life. The punishment for free negroes who fornicated or committed adultery with whites was seven years of servitude. So it was better to just screw than to actually get married in the eyes of the law.

These bans were not simply between whites and blacks. Maine banned marriages between whites and negroes and whites and Indians. In Arizona, whites had to stay away from those Malays, Mongolians and Hindus (not Indians, though?) as well. Montana specifically banned marriage between whites and Chinese, but didn't bother mentioning unions between whites and other Asians. Some states went so far as to let white people know how much negro or Indian (not to be confused with Hindu, I guess) was okay to marry--usually less than one eighth. If you weren't white, I suppose you could marry any non-white person you liked, so long as they weren't Mexican.