Anti-Miscegenation
Virginia SOL
VUS.17 The student will apply history and social science skills to analyze political and social conditions in the United States during the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century
What is Anti-Miscegenation?
Anti-miscegenation laws criminalized romantic and intimate relationships between people of different ethnicities and races. 48 states in the United States enacted these laws during the early 20th century.
These laws varied state-to-state with some laws specifically listing:
Blood quantum requirements (⅛ “negro” blood disqualifies a marriage)
Different ethnicities and races (“Korean,” “Malayan,” “Mongolian,” “Colored”)
However, some states allowed interracial marriages with international residents, but not with United States citizens.
when saying I do.pdfExpatriation Act
“Congress passed this citizenship act in 1907. Part of the Act stated that “any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.”
This law remained in place until the 1922 Married Women’s Independent Citizenship Act, known as the Cable Act, passed two years after women gained the right to vote nationwide through ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.” (from the National Archives).
Creating Community during Anti-Miscegenation: Punjabi Mexican American Families in California (SAADA)
Due to restrictive immigration laws, many single Punjabi men in the United States could not bring a potential wife to the country. Working agricultural jobs near the Mexican border, Punjabi men married Mexican women. How was this possible?
Most anti-miscegenation laws and guidelines restricted marriage from a White person to a person of color. There was often not specific enough legislation to prevent Mexican and Punjabi people. These unions are evidence of how, despite anti-miscegenation laws, Asian people in the United States sought to create families and communities.
Learn more from SAADA (South Asian American Digital Archive).
For Virginia judicial court cases, please see under "Government."
Anna May Wong: How Anti-Miscegenation Impacted Media
"Although her family had lived in the United States since the 1850s, the federal government—and Hollywood—considered Wong a foreigner solely because of her race. Even as American audiences were eager to consume stories featuring Asian characters, anti-miscegenation laws and the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code prevented movies from depicting marriages and on-screen kisses between actors of different races. Thus, despite her talent and star power, Wong was relegated to supporting roles while the lead roles were played by white actors in yellowface."
To further the agenda on anti-miscegenation and the ignorance of Chinese Americans in the United States, Wong could only book parts that perpetuated the Yellow Peril stereotypes in which the film portrayed Asian women as sexually deviant and dominating, emotionally weak and "unconventional" partners that were unfit for marriage or serious relationships.
Tying It Back to Virginia
Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924
OCR- Virginia Racial Integrity Act.pdf"In 1924, Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which was designed to stop the “intermixture” of white and Black people. The act banned interracial marriage by requiring marriage applicants to identify their race as "white," "colored," or "mixed." The law defined a white person as one “with no trace of the blood of another race.” The law did stipulate that "persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian" would be considered white, an accommodation for elite white Virginians who proudly claimed to be descendants of Pocahontas."
A Not-So-Popular Virginian Story: Naim v. Naim
Before Loving v. Virginia, there was Naim v. Naim. Han, a Chinese man, and Ruby Naim, a White woman, who were residents of Norfolk, Virginia, married in North Carolina to evade anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia. North Carolina had only prevented Black and White individuals from marrying but did not contain legal language that included Asian people. The court case arose because they wanted a divorce later in the relationship. Virginia courts voided that marriage – a way to enforce anti-miscegenation through judicial review.
OCR- NaimvNaim.pdfBefore Loving v. Virginia, there was Naim v. Naim in Norfolk to challenge the state’s race laws – The Virginian-Pilot.pdfAt William & Mary
Margaret Lee Masters, the 2nd Asian ancestry woman to have attended William & Mary, faced challenges with anti-miscegenation laws when trying to marry her partner, Joseph Masters, a White man. Katherine Masters, Margaret Masters' daughter, details her parents' experience with these anti-miscegenation laws through an oral history we conducted under the APM Research Project.
“They did not (marry in Virginia). It was 1947, and it was illegal because it was considered a mixed marriage. So they drove to Washington DC, and they got married in front of a justice of the peace, and you could do it there but not in Virginia.”
Katherine Masters, daughter of Margaret Masters in a 2022 Oral History
Margaret's story is an example of how anti-miscegenation laws were not entirely successful in keeping racial groups apart from each other. As states passed more legislation to allow for interracial marriage, couples like Margaret and Joseph found loopholes to get married and stay together.