Conclusion: The Ghost of the Past

Abstract

Abstract When the last act in the historical drama of miscegenation law finally took place, it reflected a half century of transformation in the links between civil rights and constitutional equality, shaped by old and new debates about race discrimination, colorblindness, and same-sex marriage. In 1999, Curtis Inabinett, a Black legislator in South Carolina, sent legislative aides searching for remnants of racism in South Carolina law, and he was appalled to learn that the state constitution still contained a provision, enacted in 1895, that “the marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto, or person who shall have one-eighth or more negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.” Inabinett, a sixty-six-year old Democrat, vowed to “expunge the constitution of the language” of this “extremely offensive” provision. In nearby Alabama, his contemporary Alvin Holmes was every bit as angry, though Holmes, who had built a career in electoral politics on his history of arrests in early civil rights demonstrations, was not at all surprised. Holmes and the Alabama chapter of the NAACP had already tried to get Alabama to repeal the section of its state constitution providing that “the legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any