The Loving Decision - (June 12, 1967)
Presented here is the actual text of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the case which overturned the laws against interracial marriage still in effect as late as 1967 in 16 states. Many other states had enacted such laws in previous years, but had repealed them by the time of the Loving Decision.
The case is not only about intermarriage, but also, about how this country defined people in terms of "race", for not only did the Virginia statute in question prohibit the intermarriage of "whites" with "coloreds" and American Indians, it also assigned multiracial people to one or the other of these groups (but never to more than one or to a separate mixed category), depending upon the degree and type of mixture.
A white person was someone with no trace of any but "Caucasian blood", with the exception of a person who had 1/16 or less of American Indian ancestry (and no other non-white ancestry), an allowance notably covering some wealthy and well-respected descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. A black person was anyone with any "ascertainable" negro blood, the
