" When Mr Obama's parents married, in 1960, a union such as theirs, between a white woman and a black man, was illegal in over half of America's states" [ The Economist, May 10th, 2008 ]

First, is it correct that some 25 or more states had such a law?

Second, was this law actively enforced in many, or all, of them and, if so, what penalty was there?

Third, what happened to a mixed race couple who had married legally elsewhere if they settled in a state where such a marriage was illegal?


There was a woman, Mrs Loving, who died about a week ago, who notably represented such a marriage .( She, like Rosa Parks, was unknown here until her death was reported in a 'newspaper of record').Her obituary in The Times suggested that she was something of a reluctant heroine. Her case involved Virginia, but it wasn't clear to what extent it was peculiar.

From WIkipedia's article on Anti-miscegenation laws -

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes interracial sex between whites and members of other races. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have since 1863 been termed "miscegenation." Contemporary usage of the term "miscegenation" is less frequent. In North America, laws against interracial marriage and interracial sex existed and were enforced in the Thirteen Colonies from the late seventeenth century onwards, and subsequently in several US states and US territories until 1967. Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany, from 1935 until 1945, and in South Africa during the Apartheid era, from 1949 until 1985.[1]
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The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1883 case Pace v. Alabama (106 U.S. 583). The Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama anti-miscegenation statute did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. According to the court, both races were treated equally, because whites and blacks were punished in equal measure for breaking the law against interracial marriage and interracial sex. This judgment was overturned in 1967 in the Loving v. Virginia case, where the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional.
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Spurred on by Roddenbery's introduction of the anti-miscegenation amendment, politicians in many of the 19 states lacking anti-miscegenation laws proposed their enactment. However, Wyoming in 1913 was the only state lacking such a law that enacted one.
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The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws only began to be widely called into question after the Second World War. In 1948, the California Supreme Court in Perez v. Sharp ruled that the Californian anti-miscegenation statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and was therefore unconstitutional. This was the first time since Reconstruction that a state court had declared an anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional. California was the first state since Ohio in 1887 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. In a number of states, state laws prohibiting interracial marriage and interracial sex were repealed after Perez v. Sharp.

During the 1950s, anti-miscegenation laws were repealed in state after state, except in the South. Nonetheless, in the 1950s, the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws was still a controversial issue in the U.S., even among supporters of racial integration.
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Most white Americans in the 1950s were opposed to interracial marriage and did not see laws banning interracial marriage as an affront to the principles of American democracy. A 1958 Gallup poll showed that 96 percent of white Americans dissapproved of interracial marriage. However, attitudes towards bans on interracial marriage quickly changed in the 1960s.

By the 1960s, civil rights organisations were helping interracial couples who were being penalized for their relationships to take their cases to the Supreme Court. Since Pace v. Alabama, the court had declined to make a judgment in such cases. But in 1964, the Warren Court decided to issue a ruling in the case of an interracial couple from Florida who had been convicted because they had cohabited. In McLaughlin v. Florida, the Supreme Court ruled that the Florida state law which prohibited cohabitation between whites and non-whites was unconstitutional and based solely on a policy of racial discrimination. However, the court did not rule on the Florida's ban on marriage between whites and non-whites, despite the appeal of the plaintiffs to do so and the argument made by the state of Florida that its ban on cohabitation between whites and blacks was ancillary to its ban on marriage between whites and blacks. However, in 1967 the court did decide to rule on the remaining anti-miscegenation laws when it was presented with the case of Loving v. Virginia.
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n 1967, 17 Southern states (all the former slave states plus Oklahoma) still enforced laws prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites. Maryland repealed its law in response to the start of the proceedings at the Supreme Court. After the ruling of the Supreme Court, the remaining laws were no longer in effect. Nonetheless, it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially remove defunct anti-miscegenation laws from their law books. In the respective referendums, 62% of voters in South Carolina and 59% of voters in Alabama voted to remove these laws.
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Wikipedia also has tables showing states which enacted laws, dates of enactment, and dates of repeal.

From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Anti-miscegenation laws:

"Although the anti-miscegenation law reappeared in the civil code of 1876, enforcement was sporadic at best. Well into the 1880s, many interracial couples lived together as husband and wife with little state interference."

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Does anyone else find humor in the existence of an Encyclopedia of Arkansas?
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OK, yes, there is an Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

Never heard of those state encyclopedias before, but I just never had a reason to inquire.

Kinda funny how interracial marriages were banned, but it was okay to meet behind the barn and have sex, and produce mixed children. Just no paper trail and no dna I suppose.

Interracial sex has always followed natural laws rather than man-made ones.

There has been a marked tendency in recent decades to look at laws such as these, and let loose with a fusillade of criticism. I think it is more important to understand the historical context which spawned them. Them, and the Japanese interment camps, the Shoa, the Spanish Inquisition, all examples of man's inhumanity to man. Understanding is not approving, that is a mistake some make. And, I am not so naive as to say that understanding will eliminate future examples. But, it may help.