Jasmine Outline and Five Pages

1. Introduction
1. Topic: use Judge Bazile’s 1965 quote (“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”) as a microcosm of some of the important factors that came into play during the case. Argument 1: religion was a net positive for interracial relationships, despite the beliefs of people like Bazile. Argument 2: people ignored the nuance of both Mildred’s and Richard’s racial identities. Resulting argument: Bazile was out of touch with public opinion about both religion and racial identity.
2. Context
1. Origins of miscegenation laws
1. When did the first ones occur
2. On what grounds were they enacted
2. Original 1958 case:
1. What went down
2. Consequences for Lovings
3. Unsuccessful early ‘60s Loving appeal & Bazile’s racist quote
3. Religion and Interracial Marriage
1. Bazile & religious arguments against interracial marriage
1. southern white Protestantism
2. Religious arguments for interracial marriage
1. Dan Marshall and Perez v. Sharp
2. 1964 article about archdiocesan council of Catholic men supporting interracial marriage
3. Amicus curiae in support of Lovings from Roman Catholic bishops during the Supreme Court case
3. Those who cared enough to take action were generally on the pro interracial marriage side
4. Racial identity
1. Mildred’s racial identity
1. How she identified
2. How others identified her
2. Richard’s racial identity
1. How he identified
2. How others identified him
3. Exactly which races did Virginia law prevent from getting married
1. Differences between code 20-54 and code 20-58?
4. Overall perceptions of mixed race individuals
4. Actually V. Conclusion

Other things to find a place for:

• How did antimiscegenation laws develop between 1958 and 1967
• Lead up to Loving v. Virginia - people were aware of the potential implications of an interracial marriage related Supreme Court case

To be used somewhere near the beginning

Laws against interracial relationships in America date back to the mid 17th century, and so does the connection between race and religion. In 1662, Virginia banned fornication between “any christian… with a negro man or woman.” The phrasing implies that Christianity and blackness were two mutually exclusive categories. (...)

Context / Introduction to the original case:

Central Point, Virginia was a town known for its pervasive racial mixing. Black, white, and Native American heritage mingled to such an extent that the town was nicknamed the “passing capitol of America.” This was the home of Mildred Jeter, a black and Native American woman, and Richard Loving, her ostensibly white boyfriend. In June of 1958, the two traveled to Washington, D.C. to get married, and for the next five weeks it seemed as though nothing was amiss. Unfortunately, this peace would not last long. One July night, the two were rudely awakened by the local sheriff and his two deputies, who were there to arrest them for breaking Virginia Codes 20-54 and 20-58, which banned interracial marriage and eloping to other states to avoid that ban, respectively. Though racial mixing was, in general, tacitly accepted in Central Point, the Lovings’ decision to formalize what many considered a transgression apparently crossed the line.

The consequences they suffered were a curious mixture of harshness and leniency. The Lovings were indicted by the Circuit Court of Caroline County and decided to plead guilty to the charges, which resulted in them being sentenced to a year in jail. However, rather than let the sentence begin immediately, the trial judge, Leon M. Bazile, decided to suspend it for 25 years, as long as the Lovings left Virginia and did not return together for the duration of those years. One might believe that Bazile was demonstrating some modicum of compassion by not putting the Lovings behind bars, particularly because they had a newborn child to take care of. In reality, however, banishing interracial couples from the state was a strategy used by many southern judges because it allowed them to punish offenders while still being lenient enough to avoid encouraging opposition from activists. Furthermore, the pain the Lovings suffered when forced to uproot their lives and move far away from their family and friends for the “crime” of daring to love one another was clearly a substantial, unwarranted punishment.

As the African-American freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s progressed, the Lovings began to hope that perhaps they could benefit from the civil rights legislation that was slowly being squeezed out of the federal government. They moved back to Virginia and with the help of two new lawyers, Bernard Cohen and Phil Hirschkop, filed a class-action suit in federal court in an attempt to force Judge Bazile to lift the restrictions on their living arrangements. Unfortunately for the Lovings, Bazile was just as against interracial marriage in 1965 as he had been in 1959, and he upheld the Lovings’ sentences using language that demonstrated as much: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” This quote is justifiably famous, as it not only illustrates the depths of the racist dogmas that interracial couples like the Lovings faced, but also brings in two of the most interesting factors in the miscegenation law debate: religion, particularly which side had a more legitimate basis for believing that their faith supported their political stance; and acknowledgement or lack thereof of a national racial picture that included more than just black and white.

Religion

The Roman Catholic Bazile clearly believed that religion was on the side of the conservatives when it came to interracial marriage. He was not alone in this assumption that God “did not intend for the races to mix.” In fact, his beliefs, uncharacteristic of prominent Roman Catholic ideology at the time, may have come about due to encouragement from his wife, Virginia Bowcock Bazile. A devout Southern Baptist, she encouraged him to take a more fundamentalist approach to the Bible, a mindset shared by many white southern Protestants. Those who read the Bible literally sometimes used passages like Deuteronomy 22:9, which reads, "Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled" to justify antimiscegenation laws. These backers of racial purity ideology, however, were not as active in defending miscegenation laws as religiously motivated defenders of interracial marriage were in opposing them. I argue, therefore, that religion was, overall, a progressive force when it came to the fight to legalize interracial marriage nationwide.

Examples of religiously based advocacy groups in support of abolishing antimiscegenation laws are not hard to come by. In 1944, Dan Marshall, the lawyer for an interracial couple who were attempting to circumvent Californian antimiscegenation laws, helped found the Catholic Interracial Council of Los Angeles (LACIC). The organization soon adopted an “adamant platform calling for integration” rather than segregation; “free and uncondescending social mingling” rather than “friendship for non-Caucasians at a safe distance; and the cleaning of our own houses by some of us white Catholics before we start ridding others of racism.” As part of LACIC’s quest to promote civil rights, Marshall decided to take the case of Andrea Pérez and Sylvester Davis, his clients, to the California Supreme Court, with the hope of arguing that California’s miscegenation law was unconstitutional because it violated religious freedom. The Catholic Church, unlike the state of California, did not forbid interracial marriage, so Marshall argued that the state was violating the right of Pérez and Davis to “participate fully in the sacramental life of the religion in which they believe.” The Court ended up deciding that California’s miscegenation law was indeed unconstitutional. While the case ended up hinging on other factors, such as the validity of race classifications, it is of no small importance that Marshall felt that religious justifications were powerful enough to sway state Supreme Court justices.

Religious arguments against miscegenation laws continued to proliferate during the 19 years between the Perez v. Sharp decision and the Loving case. A 1964 Baltimore Afro-American article announced, “The archdiocesan council of Catholic men last week urged the repeal of Missouri’s prohibition of intermarriage between races.” In fact, the council believed that “the anti-miscegenation law was opposed by the divine will and by natural law and probably would be held unconstitutional if tested.” This assertion that the “divine will” was actually in favor of interracial marriage ran directly contrary to Bazile’s opinion that the various races were meant to be separate. ((Talk about natural law stuff too? The idea that prohibiting interracial marriage went against natural law was hella controversial too.)) Lastly, the inclusion of the opinion that miscegenation laws were “probably” unconstitutional indicates an awareness of the potential ramifications of a Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case. ((add stuff later about people foreseeing the possibility of the Loving case being the one to change everything)).

In February of 1967, 16 Roman Catholic bishops, archbishops, and apostolic administrators, along with two national Catholic organizations, took their support for interracial marriage a step further by filing an amicus curiae brief in support of the Lovings. In doing so, they affirmed their belief in the idea that “with regard to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.” Had they ended here, they would not necessarily have been entirely in opposition with Judge Bazile’s opinion that God “did not intend for the races to mix”; after all, it could be argued that the divine will was for the races to remain separate, but that those who failed to do so should still be treated like children of God. The remainder of the brief, however, made it clear that the bishops were in favor of interracial marriage itself, not just against discrimination based on it.