The Fluidity of the Anti-Miscegenation
Spirit in Atlanta and southern Georgia: a Charter of Interracial Intimacy from de Jure to de Facto Opposition, and Beyond
Amber Paul
History 3090
October 30, 2005
Dr. Gagnon
At the basis of anti-miscegenation
laws lay the white-supremacist belief that white womanhood -- a symbol of white
purity and superiority -- had to be protected from the innate lust of the
black. Out of all the multitude factors of discrimination, miscegenation, and
racial amalgamation, was the by far the one that instilled most fear and images
of utter ruin in the minds of the whites. Georgia, and more specifically the
greater Atlanta area including Fulton County and the Southern belt including
Macon, Columbus, and Albany, encompassed this belief perhaps more than any
other state (except for its bordering sister states that had similar racial
paradigms). To fully delve into the impact that anti-miscegenation laws
portended, and how they eventually ended and what changes they brought about, a
closer look into their whole course must be chartered, specifically in the
greater Atlanta area. When the
Supreme Court ruled in 1967 in Loving vs.
Virginia that all state anti-miscegenation statutes were void, the greater Atlanta
area slumbered to its reality, and de facto acceptance of miscegenation was
extremely painful and slow. Some sociologists contend that anti-miscegenation
still lives on in this area, not by law, but by social behavior. Nevertheless,
it remains important to delineate the course of anti-miscegenation laws and
their impact on both sides of the 1967 divide, and how the ideology and actions
have evolved, even though the spirit of these laws may have unfortunately
remained to this day. It is therefore extremely significant to examine
thoroughly the instances in the Atlanta
area that occurred before and after 1967, and the ideologies running
underneath, due to the fact that pure statistical data, or any other empirical
data, about the number of interracial marriages or relationships simply does
not exist. The U.S. Census Bureau first had sound data about the number of interracial
marriages after the laws had been repealed, too late for the purpose of
examining statistically how many interracial marriages or relationships these
anti-miscegenation laws succeeded in destroying. Nevertheless, what could be
done was extrapolate generally how
many of these marriages did take place before and after these laws were voided,
to elucidate clearly the engrossing influence they had on both whites and
blacks. While it may seem that anti-miscegenation laws completely eradicated
most of interracial marriages and the disposition to engage in one, it is quite
surprising to note that despite the brutality that followed after violation of
these laws, numerous instances of interracial relationships did occur in the
Atlanta belt, as is surprising to note that even after elimination of these
laws, white-black sex and marriage have remained alarmingly taboo for most
habitants here to this day; hence, interracial marriage has chartered quite a
fluid course in the history of Atlanta and southern Georgia, albeit with a few curves
along the way.
Before charting the histiography of Jim
Crow statutes and laws in Georgia,
it is paramount to expound upon the ideology and technicalities behind them.
The simplest description of the ideology behind anti-miscegenation laws was
that they were the father of all discriminatory statutes. The foremost concern
that whites had even before the Civil War but especially after was that racial
amalgamation would lead to complete degradation and annihilation, much more
than any integration of public or work places, schools, or transportation. In
fact, segregation was necessary in all these locations due to the very fact
that a black man and his ingrained lust to rape white women should never be
brought in contact with his purported object of desire. To Southern whites,
white womanhood symbolized purity and idealism, and any potential attack on it
needed to be curtailed in its infancy, and if not, then avenged most brutally
for it. This was especially true in Georgia,
as in most of the Deep South: “This is Spring, 1944. A
novel of miscegenation in Georgia
is a best seller, and there are other signs that Stark Young may have extracted
the last perfume from the Southern rose, that nostalgia itself is gone with the
wind.” The significance of this particular excerpt from an article on April 16, 1944 is that while the
author reminisces about the lost ideal of the South, he commences to describe
such a nostalgic view with the fact that a novel about miscegenation in Georgia
is a bestseller, almost putting the two on the same pedestal. Such was the
obsession white Southerners had for miscegenation. Similarly, an article published
in The Atlanta Constitution in 1913 carried Georgia’s
House Representative, Roddenbery’s, vehement proclamations that the federal
constitution needed to be amended to outlaw the marriage of whites and blacks:
‘I appeal to the states to pass laws that will
prevent these outrages. Let the people of the several states cry out to their
legislatures to protect by law our weak, helpless and unfortunate against the
brutality that cannot but impair our civilization and lead finally to violence
and vengeance that all lovers of law and order would deplore.’
Particularly
significant about Roddenbery’s diction is that first, Georgia was among the
states that championed anti-miscegenation laws most vociferously (which
suggested quite clearly the deep-ingrained racist ideology in the state), and
second, that anti-miscegenation laws were seen to be as a check to prevent not
only destruction of the white civilization but also “mob violence” and
“brutality.” Roddenbery’s speech was triggered by the marriage of Helen Hanson,
a 15-year-old white girl, and a 42-year-old black, George Thompson, in Michigan.
Perhaps most revealing is Roddenbery’s diction in the following tirade:
‘My
God, that the laws of any civilized state will permit a bestial brute to have
sanctioned by law his wedlock to such a child! [Thompson] is formally charged
with abduction…I don’t know what they will do…in Michigan,
but, by God, I know what they would do in Georgia.
No jail in my section of the country would be strong enough to hold that
nigger.’
Again,
Roddenbery quite clearly implied that Georgia’s
predilection for anti-miscegenation laws was far stronger than most other
states, more so because the more entrenched racist ideology of the whites of Georgia
(as opposed to Michigan and other
northern states) would have led them to most likely lynch Thompson. That was
the “mob law” that Roddenbery alluded to; that this very “mob law,” or
anti-miscegenation law, needed to be put into the federal constitution to
prevent such mob violence and, in addition, put the “brute” back in his place. Hand-in-hand
with this ideology were the technicalities that Southern whites introduced in
enacting these anti-miscegenation laws, so as to further cement white
superiority in the informal and intimate domains of life. The chief rule that
was applied was the one-drop rule, which outlined the method to determine
whiteness and blackness and suggested that the offspring from any black-white
union would be illegitimate. Similarly, every illegitimate child was considered
black. While states had various ratios to determine what constituted a black, Georgia
instituted a policy that if an individual had one-eighth of African ancestry, he/she
would be considered black, and hence, marriage to any white would be void. The
implications of this rule were that white men could forge secret relationships
with black women while ridding themselves of any matrimonial and parental
responsibilities. Such a case happened in Georgia
in late 1870s, when in Dillon vs. Dillon,
Mr. Dillon denied the legality of his marriage with Mrs. Dillon on the account
that she had more than one-eighth African ancestry. Here, however, the
anti-miscegenation law was not enforced by the courts, who claimed that because
Mrs. Dillon looked white enough, Mr. Dillon would need to pay her alimony after
their divorce. This case was a landmark for not only Georgia but also for the
whole South as Southern whites were forced to fulfill matrimonial and parental
rights if the color line distinguishing blackness was vague or lineage was
unable to be traced. Nonetheless, while this may have led to increased numbers
of interracial marriages upheld, these marriages were still extremely rare
before 1967 due to anti-miscegenation laws being enforced much more zealously
than otherwise. The need for such, as well as enforcement of the one-drop rule,
were rendered even more important so that blacks could not gain “access to
white wealth and privilege through marriage…[after] all, in black-white
marriages, the one drop rule dictated that the heirs to white fortunes would be
black.” At the heart of these anti-miscegenation laws, however, was the
ideology that Oswald Villard and W.E.B. Du Bois in a letter termed so aptly:
“Anti-miscegenation laws amounted to a state-sponsored declaration ‘that black
blood is a physical taint’ – a concession that ‘no self-respecting colored man
[or] woman can be asked to [make].’” [1]
Yet this concession had loomed
profoundly in the greater Atlanta
belt since 1869, when the Georgia Supreme Court indicted Charlotte Scott (a
black) for adultery and fornication in the case Scott vs. Georgia, and then later on as a series of
anti-miscegenation statutes were put into place. In this case the State of
Georgia pronounced that that the “Code of Georgia, as adopted by the new
constitution, section 1707, forever prohibits the marriage relation between the
two races, and declares all such marriages null and void.” What follows is a
ghastly explanation for this segregation, and which highlights how overtly
racist the whites in Georgia
were:
The
amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but it is always productive of
deplorable results…the offspring of these unnatural connections are generally
sickly and effeminate, and that they are inferior in physical development and
strength to the full blood of either race…such connections never elevate the
inferior race to the position of the superior, but they bring down the superior
to that of the inferior. They are productive of evil and evil only, without any
corresponding good…the laws of the Code of Georgia makes all citizens equal,
without regard to race or color; but it does not create…moral or social
equality between the different races…Such equality does not in face exist and
never can. The God of nature made it otherwise, and no human law can produce
it, and no human tribunal can enforce it…From the tallest archangel in heaven
down to the meanest reptile on earth moral and social inequalities exist, and
must continue to exist throughout all eternity.
The quite lucid
arguments of the State of Georgia
encompassed the majority opinion of the whites of the Atlanta
area, as the riot of 1906 and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan there showed.
Sufficient it is to note that both these phenomenon were triggered chiefly due
to the supposed violation of anti-miscegenation laws by blacks. Yet this case
was only a defense of the first anti-miscegenation statute that Georgia passed
in 1865, a statute that made it unlawful for officials to issue marriage
licenses to “person of African descent and the other a white person,” the
penalty of which was a “misdemeanor that carried a fine between $200 and $500,
or confinement in jail for three months, or both.” Similarly ministers in
violation could be fined between $500 to $1000, confined to jail for six
months, or both. In 1926, this state code was expanded to include that only
colored clergyman could marry blacks and that any interracial marriage was null
if the parties went to another jurisdiction where such marriages were allowed.
Then, in 1927, the statute was revised to a declaration that it was ‘“unlawful
for a white person to marry anyone except a white person.”’ In addition, “all
persons with any ascertainable trace of Negro blood must be classified as
persons of color,” with the penalty being imprisonment in the penitentiary for
one to two years.” The very next year, miscegenation was upgraded from a
misdemeanor to a “felony,” and whites were forbidden to marry Asians or Malays.
In 1935, the state code was reaffirmed with the simple statement that it was
illegal for whites to marry any other but whites, with felony and one to two
year imprisonment as the penalties. From 1935 to 1967 when Loving vs. Virginia repealed it, the Georgia
state code remained the same. Although each state had similar statutes, some of
them were less stringent than others; however, Georgia’s was the among the most
stringent ones, as it expressively stated that miscegenation with not only
blacks but with any other race was a felony (many states did not expressly state
this) and also that any miscegenation even outside of Georgia would still be
void (which, again, many states did indeed allow). In addition, Georgia
was among the chief proponents of having an anti-miscegenation law put into the
federal constitution, as its House Representative Roddenberry opined for in
1944. These factors all were significant because they constituted for the
relative dearth of any interracial marriages or relationships before 1967 in
the Atlanta and southern Georgia
area. [2]
However, there were still instances
when interracial marriages or interracial sex did occur, but when they did
indeed happen or purportedly happened in the eyes of whites, the punishments
meted out curtailed those instances even further. These punishments were of twofold
nature: the first and more ostensible one by brutality, and the second one by
law and bureaucracy. Perhaps the most popular one was the Atlanta riot of 1906:
“Goaded by false stories about rapes of white women by Negro men, a white mob
terrorized blacks in Georgia’s capital…clubs and fists descending to the
accompaniment of savage shouting…the body lay dead in a pool of blood in the
street.” The whites went in hordes after new prey as they saw any black passing
by. Most of the lynchings that occurred were primarily due to the supposed sex
crimes blacks committed against white women. Rural Georgia
was perhaps the site of the most lynchings, as ‘“if there was such a thing as a
typical lynching it took place in a rural south Georgia county during the summer.’”
Nevertheless, the records of the NAACP “reveal that lynchings could and did
occur at any location across the state…and more often in Georgia
than in any other state except Mississppi. Generally the pretext for a murder
without trial was the threat of miscegenation.” Similarly, in “May 1940…a black
man and white woman were seen together in the woods outside Social
Circle to the east of Atlanta.
The Ku Klux Klan sought reprisal by lynching two black men entirely unconnected
with the incident…” Hence, due to these circumstances, blacks rarely ever
threatened to violate any anti-miscegenation laws, and consequently,
interracial marriages or interracial rape by blacks were extremely rare.
Usually these lynchings, as the 1940 incident indicates, were provoked by
“unsubstantiated rumor.” The consequences of miscegenation were too morose for
blacks to consider throwing their lives away, and only a few cases, in relative
terms, ever had any truth to them. However, that by no means precluded any
interracial marriages or relationships in the Atlanta
and southern Georgia
area during that time, as indeed the failed project of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to reach out to rural areas (like Albany)
showed. One of the leaders, Sherrod, noted “despondently that by the end of
1962, the only Albany students
willing to be involved were those who thought that SNCC was a ‘great way to
meet girls’…The question students were asking was ‘how can I hit on one of
those fair broads.”’ However, whether and how many of these initial attractions
developed into full-blown affairs remained unclear. Yet students did indeed
flout “SNCC’s strict rule proscribing volunteers from forming
relationships…Sherrod admitted, ‘Yea, sexual relations. This is a hell of a
problem.’” As this incident suggested, not all blacks were completely deterred
by the consequences in their pursuit of sexual expression. However, it is safe
to claim that instances of these kinds were extremely rare. Perhaps more
indicative of the situation was the treatment handed out to Georgia
author Lillian Smith, who in her book Strange
Fruit told the love story of a white man and a mulatto maid -- and whose
book didn’t even merit a review from the Atlanta
Constitution. Smith’s home was later burned down by arsonists in 1955. Such
was white Georgians’ fear of miscegenation that even proponents, let alone the
black offenders, were not spared personal or property damage. One more telling
instance was the desegregation of two schools in Augusta,
Richmond County
in 1965 (as was warranted by the Brown
vs. Board of Education decision of 1956). While the schools allowed some
racial desegregation, they also segregated by sex for the first time; then, in
an effort to cover the real reason county officials themselves ironically
brought the truth to light, by denying vehemently that this new segregation was
placed to separate black male teenagers from white female ones. This
essentially showed the second way that whites tried to implement
anti-miscegenation laws in action, by law and bureaucracy --- with the first
being brutality as a deterrent to miscegenation. [3]
The Supreme Court decision of Loving vs. Virginia of 1967 changed this
whole legal scenario, though, but in Georgia,
anti-miscegenation hues remained until at least five years afterwards. The
pretext of Loving vs. Virginia was
that white Richard Loving had married black Mildred Jeter in Washington
D.C. to avoid their home state, Virginia’s,
anti-miscegenation laws. However, when they moved back to Virginia,
their marriage license was deemed to be void, and they were arrested and
indicted for violating Virginia’s
Racial Integrity Act. Their one-year jail sentence was waived on the condition
that they would leave Virginia
and not return for twenty-five years. Although initially they did move to the District
of Columbia, Mildred Loving in 1963 wrote a letter to
Attorney Journal Robert F. Kennedy to attain some respite, and eventually the
U.S. Supreme Court “rendered a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice Warren,
which reversed the Virginia courts and, after some three hundred years, finally
put an end to the enforceability of anti-miscegenation laws.” In his decision, Warren
overtly attacked anti-miscegenation laws as created only to maintain white
supremacy, and held them to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal
Protection Clause – for marriage was
‘one
of the basic civil rights of man…to deny this fundamental freedom on so
unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in the [act]…is
surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of
law…Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of
another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by State.’
While the
Fourteenth Amendment was originally not drawn up to prevent anti-miscegenation
laws so as long as they applied equally to every race, Loving vs. Virginia nonetheless held that they intrinsically were
discriminatory, and hence, illegal. The ramifications of this court case were
immediate, as all anti-miscegenation statutes for all states were voided with
immediate effect. However, what was alarming was that the reaction of whites
was relatively muted, as opposed to the Brown
vs. Board of Education decision:
Whereas
officials openly and effectively stymied the enforcement of Brown in large areas of the country for
decades, opposition to the implementation of Loving was relatively Lilliputian. White anti-miscegenationists did
not riot, or promulgate congressional manifestoes condemning the Supreme Court,
or close down marriage bureaus to prevent the desegregation of matrimony.
This was also
true in the Atlanta region and most
of Georgia,
although Georgia
took five years to repeal the anti-miscegenation statutes from its books, in
1972. However, while indeed the reaction to Loving
was muted in Georgia
as well as the other Southern states normally associated with racist tendencies,
Georgia
nonetheless did have a few instances where the state refused to comply with the
order and refused to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. One such
incident was noted in a New York Times
May 21, 1971 article, where the Justice Department filed a suit against the
state of Georgia and a county official, H.W. Roberts, for refusing to issue a
marriage license to white Army lieutenant
John Ray Sanford (at Fort Benning, Georgia) and his black fiancée, Betty
Byrom of Mountain View, Georgia. The United States District Court in Atlanta
issued a temporary restraining order against Roberts and forced him to grant
the license. This incident does suggest that while the 1967 decision had
immediate repercussions in some of the Northern states, and especially
Virginia, Georgia
still lumbered to its reality and county officials still often used their personal
discretion in refusing to grant marriage licenses. They were, however, normally
forced to do so once the federal courts got involved. The other interesting
observation was that Georgia
did not immediately remove the anti-miscegenation statutes from its books until
five years after the 1967 decision, when Virginia
had done so in 1968 and West Virginia,
Texas, Florida,
Oklahoma, and Missouri
in 1969. Although Georgia
could not actively enforce its anti-miscegenation statutes during that time,
the delay is significant in representing Georgians’ belief that white-black
marriages and sexual relations were not natural. That perhaps was the reason
why the Justice Department had to offer respite to interracial couples quite
often, especially during those five years in between from 1967 to 1972, as the
1971 case indicates. Although enforceability had been dismantled, the simmering
ideology underneath was too potent for jurisdiction to completely eradicate. [4]
This simmering ideology, although
many shades lighter than the pure racist one of the pre-1967 period, has
persisted to this day, especially in Atlanta
and southern Georgia.
The ideology behind the anti-miscegenation laws stemmed from a desire to
maintain white supremacy, but post-1967 it developed into one that fostered
racial solidarity. Before the shift in mental paradigm is discussed, the
conformity in the sheer numbers of racial intermarriages before 1967 and after
1967 suggests that not much has changed. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census
1993, the number of interracial marriages in the Unites States has increased,
from 310,000 in 1970, 651,000 in 1980, to 1,161,000 in 1992. These statistics
percentage-wise shed clearer light, though: interracial marriages accounted for
0.7% of all marriages in 1970 to 1.3% in 1980, to 2.2% in 1992. Though sound
statistical data per state does not exist as of yet, it would be safe to assume
that in states like Georgia, where racism was most deeply entrenched, these
numbers would most probably be even lower. Nonetheless, these numbers clearly suggest
that despite anti-miscegenation laws being long confined to the ashes, very
rarely do both blacks and whites condone interracial unions. In a substantial
amount of polls in recent years, a significant majority of Americans remain
against interracial marriage: “Some polls suggest that as much as 20% of the
white population continues to believe that interracial marriage should be
illegal,” writes Harvard University
law professor, Randall Kennedy. Why has the annulment of anti-miscegenation
laws not have a profound impact on interracial intimacy then? According to
Kennedy, anti-miscegenation laws had a racial motive behind it, an ideology,
and while the law may have moved on, people’s outlooks haven’t:
Some
of these [whites] express their disapproval in ways that go beyond answering
the questions of pollsters. Through stares, catcalls, and even violence, they
put a shadow over interracial intimacy…in many locales, mixed couples face a
substantial risk that they will be subjected to abuse by those who feel
affronted by a form of loving that they perceive as ‘unnatural’…A second
impediment is the centrifugal force of black solidarity…Blacks who intermarry
with whites can expect to be viewed with skepticism, if not hostility, by many
other blacks who will consider them to be racial defectors…A third impediment
has to do with the brutal consequences of deprivation: the fact that, because
of historical and ongoing oppression, many blacks will simply have less to
offer in the marriage market.
In recounting
the reasons for the opposition to interracial intimacy, Kennedy suggests that
although the means of deterrent (societal shunning rather than violence) to
miscegenation may have changed, as well as the ideology from one of pure racism
to racial solidarity, anti-miscegenation laws have lived on in spirit. This
point is evident in Elizabeth Alexander’s review of author Charles F.
Robinson’s book, Dangerous Liaisons: Sex
and Love in the Segregated South:
Although
they sought the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, African Americans also
opposed interracial marriage as an ‘abandonment or betrayal of racial
loyalities’…Anti-miscegenation laws gradually disappeared after the 1967 Loving decision by the Supreme Court.
But the existence of interracial relationships remains an emotionally charged
issue for most blacks and whites…the social attitudes of both groups today
toward interracial unions reflect the heritage of their mutual past.
Again, the
fluidity of anti-miscegenation embodiment has largely remained status quo for
both racial groups, even after the laws have vanished. While the ideology may
have changed from a purely racist one to one of solidarity and economic
concern, the specter of anti-miscegenation from before 1967 still dominates the
mental paradigms of today. This has also led to a newfound resentment towards
black males intermarrying white women, for a new social phenomenon described as
the “marriage squeeze” for black women has arisen. According to recent
statistics, “black men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to a white
spouse and 3.3 times more likely to be cohabitating with a white person, as
compared to their black female counterparts,” which in turn has led many to
believe and resent that the “most eligible and desirable black men are marrying
non-black women leaving black women wishing to marry black men with fewer
partnering options.” Consequently, racial intermarriages and miscegenation have
come under even more pressure from sociological and demographic factors, albeit
them being much less determining than the ideological one. [5]
This ideological opposition to
miscegenation has been quite evident in Atlanta and the rural southern parts of
Georgia, where social ostracizing and frowns have replaced the lynchings and where
racial solidarity has replaced pure racism, but where anti-miscegenation laws
live through common practices rather than by law. It is extremely significant
to consider that although the ideology may have changed slightly, these
practices nonetheless have more than a tinge of racism behind them. Racial
solidarity, where black is beautiful, may very well be the driving factor
against miscegenation now, as opposed to pure racism, but there still exists
nevertheless unapologetically racism behind these new reasons for
anti-miscegenation. This is most clearly seen on the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s website, where they have a forum
running asking the question: “Why do
you believe a bias against interracial dating still exists.” Some of the
responses from very common urban people are quite enlightening; a woman in Decatur, GA wrote as follows:
I
really take offense to the fact that everyone thinks that 'mainly' or
'particularly' or 'mostly' Black women get upset at IRRs [interracial
relationships]. Well, let me tell you, Black men don't like it, either. They're
just not as vocal about it as women are. You should have heard the outcry
regarding Halle Berry being "a White man's whore" in Monsters
Ball...The majority of Black women don't have a problem with IRRs but I'll tell
you what - you walk behind a beautiful Black woman holding hands with a White
guy in Buckhead on any given weekend and you'll see how much 'love' she gets
from the 'Brothas.'
Another post
from a gentleman in Decatur, GA
reads as follows:
Actually,
through the eyes of a scientist, race is a social construct. We differ very
little from a genetic standpoint. Actually, we are far more alike than
different. It is the propaganda of cultures with selfish intentions to spread
their own superiority for their benefit. I am painfully aware of the importance
of skin color to Americans. This is rooted in the very fiber of this country,
from the founding fathers to the current administration. Racism is driven by
economics, cheered by big business, and powered by a propaganda monster-the
media. The best way to control a population is the divide and conquer -
convince us that we are different. Convince us that some are more deserving
than others. The problems with interracial dating strike at the very core of
this country, its stereotypes, and its lies.
These posts suggest
most ostensibly the fact that opposition to interracial dating persists not
only in the rural and supposedly backwards areas of Georgia,
but also in such a metropolitan city like greater Atlanta.
While these and similar posts are quite revealing, the very fact that a
prominent daily like the Atlanta Journal
Constitution, in 2005, has to ask this question symbolizes how the
anti-miscegenation spirit still remains. In the southern belt of Georgia,
this is even more evident, where practices like segregated prom still occur.
The Southcoast Today recently
revealed that Johnson County High School in Wrightsville, Georgia, held a private, whites-only
prom for their children “in hopes of perpetuating a dying Southern tradition.” Similarly,
at Taylor County High School in Columbus, Georgia, students reverted to a
segregated prom after experimenting with an integrated prom only one time. The
author of this particular article, Jeffrey Shapiro, writes that
Segregated proms, although
apparently few, are one of the worst public displays of racism in today's America. By their very nature,
separate proms teach a child that to love another whose skin color is different
is immoral and forbidden. It is shameful that nearly 50 years after the Brown
decision, the practice is still going on.
This case, and that of Taylor
County High’s, reveal lucidly that anti-miscegenation was the father of all
other forms of discrimination, whether that be segregation in schools, public
places, or transportation. Commenting on Taylor County High’s case, Kron news
station noted that “parents and
students organized separate proms for whites and blacks after school officials
stopped sponsoring dances, in part because they wanted to avoid problems
arising from interracial dating.” In a similar case with racist overtures,
Barbara Cruz and Michael Berson reported in their Organization of American Historians article that in 1996 leaders of
a Georgia church “elected to disinter the body of a mixed race infant
who was buried in the church’s all-white cemetery; [after] the decision gained
national attention and protest, the church backed down and allowed the baby to
remain in the family plot.” However, the church leaders reportedly did not stop
there, as they then refused to marry the infant’s parents, a black man and a
white woman. Cases like these, while admittedly few, continue to remind Atlanta
and Georgia of
its racist past of how it intruded upon one of the most unalienable and private
rights of its citizens, that of marriage and love. While anti-miscegenation
laws have indeed disappeared from Georgia,
their remnants are still visible for all to see, in practice and through custom,
and fired by the same ideological demons as before. [6]
However, to suggest that the anti-miscegenation spirit has remained
constant from before 1967 to after would be belittling the impact that the annulment
of these laws has had in Atlanta and Georgia, but because the anti-miscegenation tendencies have remained etched in the
societal paradigms of people, “fluidity” of the anti-miscegenation spirit would
be a more apt term. The end of anti-miscegenation laws in Georgia did herald an elimination of overt racism
and did signal proliferation of interracial marriages and relationships. It
also was an open challenge to anti-miscegenationists that America was ready for an overthrow of discriminatory
practices and ideals. However, because Georgia has always been one of the states most
readily associated with the Deep South
and its racist propensity, that challenge was relatively weak compared to other
parts of the nation. The challenge to eradicate this propensity began with the
elimination of these laws, but true success would be achieved only when areas
like rural Georgia and Atlanta readily accept comprehensive affirmation,
and more importantly, the espousal of
equality in the most private of mankind’s domains. Until then, it remains a
battle to be won.
Endnotes:
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