Race, Marriage, and the Supreme Court from Pace v. Alabama (1883) to Loving v. Virginia (1967)

Abstract

Race, Marriage, and the Supreme Court from Pace v. Alabama (1883) to Loving v. Virginia (1967) Peter Wallenstein (bio) Peter Wallenstein Peter Wallenstein is associate professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Endnotes 1. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 2 (1967). 2. Code of Alabama (1867), 689–70 (title 1, ch. 5, arts. 3598, 3602). 3. Ellis v. State, 42 Ala. 525 (1868). 4. Ibid., 526. 5. Burns v. State, 48 Ala. 195, 197 (1872). 6. Ibid., 197–98; Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 408 (1857); Paul Finkelman, Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997). 7. Ford v. State, 53 Ala. 150, 151 (1875); The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873); Richard L. Aynes, “Constricting the Law of Freedom: Justice Miller, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Slaughter-House Cases,” 70 Chicago-Kent Law Review, 627–88 (1994). 8. Ford v. State, 151. 9. Green v. State, 58 Ala. 190 (1878), 191. 10. Ibid., 191. 11. Ibid., 192. 12. Hoover v. State, 59 Ala. 57, 58–60 (1878). 13. Pace & Cox v. State, 69 Ala. 231 (1882); Transcript of Record, Pace v. Alabama (Record No. 908), 1–3. 14. Transcript of Record, 5. 15. Pace & Cox v. State, 232. 16. Brief for Appellant, 4–6. 17. Brief for Appellee, 2–3. 18. Ibid., 3. 19. Brief for Appellant, 2; Brief for Appellee, 6, 9, 11. 20. Brief for Appellee, 15–16. 21. Ibid., 5, 14. 22. Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583, 584–85 (1883). For farther analysis see David P. Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years, 1789–1888 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 387–90. 23. The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883); Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). 24. Plessy v. Ferguson, 545, 547. 25. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917); Philip B. Kurland and Gerhard Casper, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law (Arlington, VA: University Publications of America, 1975), 18:36, 76–77, 130, 158–60, 272–73, 436, 442. 26. Buchanan v. Warley, 79, 81. 27. Jackson v. State, 31 Ala. App. 519, 521 (1954). 28. Jackson v. State, 260 Ala. 698 (1954); Jackson v. Alabama, 348 U.S. 888 (1954); Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955). For more detailed analysis see Chang Moon Sohn, “Principle and Expediency in Judicial Review: Miscegenation Cases in the Supreme Court” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1970), 70–73, and Byron Curti Martyn, “Racism in the United States: A History of Anti-Miscegenation Legislation and Litigation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1979), 1247–49. 29. Jack Greenberg, Race Relations and American Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 345. See also Walter F. Murphy, Elements of Judicial Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 192–93. 30. Justice William O. Douglas Papers, Box 1156, Library of Congress. For a related observation that, given the furor in the South over Brown v. Board of Education, “the last thing in the world the Justices wanted to deal with at that time was the question of interracial marriage,” see Philip Elman, “The Solicitor General’s Office, Justice Frankfurter, and Civil Rights Litigation, 1946–1960: An Oral History,” 100 Harvard Law Review, 817, 845–47 (1987). 31. William O. Douglas Papers, Library of Congress; Jackson v. Alabama, 348 U.S. 888 (1954). 32. Naim v. Virginia, 350 U.S. 891 (1955); Naim v. Virginia, 350 U.S. 985 (1956); Sohn, “Principle and Expediency,” 73–94; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7 Oct. 1954: 2; 19 Jan. 1956: 1. 33. Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 June 1955: 5. 34. Sohn, “Principle and Expediency,” 74–75. 35. Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 90 (1955). 36. Ibid., 88. 37. Bernard Schwartz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court—A Judicial Biography (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 158–62. 38. Naim v. Naim, 350 U.S. 891 (1955); Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 734, 735 (1956). See the caustic evaluation of the Supreme...