Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law--An American History / Edition 1

by Peter Wallenstein

Overview

The first in-depth history of miscegenation law in the United States, this book illustrates in vivid detail how states, communities, and the courts have defined and regulated mixed-race marriage from the colonial period to the present. Combining a storyteller's detail with a historian's analysis, Peter Wallenstein brings the sagas of Richard and Mildred Loving and countless other interracial couples before them to light in this harrowing history of how individual states had the power to regulate one of the most private aspects of life: marriage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403964083
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/17/2004
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Peter Wallenstein is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is the author of From Slave South to New South and Virginia Tech, Land Grant University, 1872-1997.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "That's No Good Here"

Part I. Abominable Mixture and Spurious Issue
* Sex, Marriage, Race, and Freedom in the Early Chesapeake * Indian Foremothers and Freedom Suits in Revolutionary Virginia * From the Chesapeake Colonies to the State of California * Race, Marriage, and the Crisis of the Union

Part II. Equal Protection of the Laws
* Post-Civil War Alabama * Reconstruction and the Law of Interracial Marriage * Accommodating the Law of Freedom of the Law of Race * Interracial Marriage and the Federal Courts, 1857-1917 * Interlude: Polygamy, Incest, Fornication, Cohabitation - and Interracial Marriage

Part III. Problem of the Color Line
* Drawing and Redrawing the Color Line * Boundaries - Race and Place in the Law of Marriage * Racial Identity and Family Property * Miscegenation Laws, the NAACP, and the Federal Courts, 1941-1963

Part IV. A Breakthrough Case in California
* Contesting the Antimiscegenation Regime - the 1960s * Virginia vesus the Lovings - and the Lovings versus Virginia * America after Loving v. Virginia

Epilogue: The Color of Love after Loving

Appendices
* Permanent Repeal of State Miscegenation Laws, 1780-1967 * Intermarriage in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa * Identity and Authority: An Interfaith Couple in Israel * Transsexuals, Gender Identity, and the Law of Marriage

Editorial Reviews

For he has unearthed many true stories that make the reader's heart ache for the sufferings of real people...” —Harriet P. Gross, Dallas Morning News

“Wallenstein compellingly traces the legal intersection between race and sex...” —Booklist

“His compelling analysis delivers a superb legal history of interracial marriage...filling a remarkable void in the literature...” —Library Journal

“...a comprehensive, almost encyclopedic, history of the law of interracial marriage in America...” —Paul Moreno, History: Reviews of New Books

“Tell the Court I Love My Wife is a remarkable study by a splendid scholar who takes a fresh look at the history of miscegenation. Peter Wallenstein's impressive research and lively writing explores issues and questions of racial identity, marriage and property rights, law and power in the long sweep of American history. All Americans who believe that the right to marry someone of a different racial identity is sacrosanct need to read this spirited and thoughtful book.” —Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University and co-editor of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia

From the Publisher

Tell the Court I Love My Wife is a remarkable study by a splendid scholar who takes a fresh look at the history of miscegenation. Peter Wallenstein's impressive research and lively writing explores issues and questions of racial identity, marriage and property rights, law and power in the long sweep of American history. All Americans who believe that the right to marry someone of a different racial identity is sacrosanct need to read this spirited and thoughtful book.

Michigan State University and co-editor of Black W Darlene Clark Hine