1967
Loving v. Virginia
388 U.S. 1. Decided June 12, 1967. Unanimous.
The opinion
The present statutory scheme dates from the adoption of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, passed during the period of extreme nativism which followed the end of the First World War.Chief Justice Warren, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
These statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.Same opinion
The Pocahontas footnote
The exception for persons with less than one-sixteenth “of the blood of the American Indian” is apparently accounted for ... by “the desire of all to recognize as an integral and honored part of the white race the descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas.”Footnote 4, quoting a tract by the State Registrar, W. A. Plecker
The Court quoted Plecker himself. The same footnote prints the 1960 code text, which reads "one-sixteenth or less." The 1924 text is on the 1924 page.
The people
The National Park Service: Richard Loving was white. Mildred Jeter had both African American and Native American ancestry. They married in Washington, DC, returned to Virginia and were arrested for violating the ban.
How Mildred Loving identified herself
Later in life she said she was Indian, Rappahannock, and not African American. Historian Arica Coleman interviewed her in 2004 for her book on race and identity in Virginia:
“I am not black. I have no black ancestry. I am Indian-Rappahannock. I told the people so when they came to arrest me.”Mildred Loving to Arica L. Coleman, 2004 interview, in TIME
The record is not one line. In June 1963 she wrote to the ACLU, “I am part negro, & part indian.” Encyclopedia Virginia says that later in life she identified only as Indian. Both are on the record, and both are hers.
What it means
The 1924 Racial Integrity Act, with its marriage ban, stood in Virginia for 43 years until the Supreme Court struck it down. The decision invalidated the bans on interracial marriage in sixteen states.
Sources
Cornell LII, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1
Encyclopedia Virginia, Loving v. Virginia (June 12, 1967)
National Park Service, The Racial Integrity Act
Arica L. Coleman, “What You Didn’t Know About Loving v. Virginia,” TIME
The New York Times Magazine, “The Color of Love” (the 1963 letter)
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