8 Guild, J. P., Black Laws of Virginia, pp. 34-6. 1936. For examples of legal and domestic complications see Mangum, C. S., The Legal Status of the Negro, pp. 236-73. Also chapter, “Who Is a Negro?” pp. 1-17.
9 Carey McWilliams says, “That many persons of non-Negroid blood are frequently caught in these absurd regulations is clearly indicated by the increasing number of libel and slander actions that have been successfully prosecuted in southern courts. As the percentage of persons of pure Negro extraction decreases (as it is doing) the classification upon which Jim-Crow statutes are based are becoming increasingly unreasonable. I am convinced that many statutes are for this reason alone clearly unconstitutional. A Louisiana appellate court recently held invalid a marriage between a white man and a woman whose great-great-grandmother was a Negress. How can such classification be upheld as reasonable? A few years ago a woman in Arizona, who was part Negro and part white, challenged the constitutionality of a miscegenation statute on the ground that the way the law was worded she could not contract a legal marriage with either a Negro or a white man.” (Antioch Review, 1942, p. 638).
10 See Sex and Race, Vol. 2, p. 358, for more detail.
11 General Laws of Colorado, Chap. 63, 1736, sec. 2, and 1737, sec. 3. 1877. For extract from this law see, Rogers, J. A., 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, 19th ed., pp. 18-19.
12 Vernier, C. G., American Family Laws, Vol. 1, sec. 44, pp. 204-09. Also 1938 Suppl. pp. 24-5. The states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming. Oregon and California have since annulled this law.
13 See also Sex and Race, Vol. 2, p. 325. 1942.
14 For another very tragic case related in greater detail see Sex and Race, Vol. 2, p. 376. 1942.
15 Mangum, C. S., has cited many cases ruled on by the U. S. Supreme Court, pp. 239-40.
16 See Communique issued by the Tripartite Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), Aug. 2, 1945. Sec. 3, A, 4, which provides for the abolition of all discrimination “on grounds of race,” etc. in Germany. Equally fantastic laws in the United States, South Africa, and Australia remain untouched, however.
Chapter Three
MIXED MARRIAGES AS SEEN BY THE WHITE SCIENTIST
“In the accumulation of knowledge there has been great progress. In the psychology of the scientific observer there has been no fundamental change since the Reindeer Age. In point of scientific ethics the last hundred years mark a retrogression” Lowie. “Are We Civilized?”
PRIOR to the popularizing of the so-called science of anthropology by Blumenbach in the early years of the last century, the favorite instrument for proving the doctrine of inequality or equality within the human race was the Bible. St. Augustine held that no true believer in God could assert that an Ethiopian was not the equal of a white man. Mohamet, too, preached the equality of all “races,” and told his followers that even if a Negro slave with pepper-corn hair had become their ruler they should obey him.* Spain, Portugal and Italy actually practiced this equality.
The fight both for and against slavery in the United States was waged first along scriptural lines.† The pro-slavery faction even asserted at times that the Negro was descended not from Adam but from a pre-Adamite group from which it was said Cain took a wife while the anti-slavery faction was as firm in proving from the Bible that “of one blood” God had made all the races of the earth. There was also the theory of the descent from Ham which attained great vogue and still does in certain quarters.
With the superseding of religion by science the battle of inequality shifted from a scriptural wording to a scientific one. Now it was no longer practical. Now it was up to the equalitarians to prove that science was wrong, though, be it noted that the first scientists, like Blumenbach and Lamarck, held to the equality of the human race. In other words, the pro-slavery faction and the anti-slavery one had entered the stage in new costumes. Underneath were the same bodies.
In this chapter and the three that follow I have given, therefore, an anthology of what has been said in modern times on mixed marriages.
WHO IS A NEGRO? EUROPEAN TYPES—FRENCH
VII. Colette (Gabrielle Sidonie), France’s leading female novelist. In most Southern states she would not be legally white. (See p. viii).
Some of these opinions are from world-famed scientists, one or two of whom are Nobel prize winners; others from biologists working in great laboratories; or doctors of philosophy from great universities; or able writers, as well as mere scribblers and the man in the street. However, no matter what the degree of knowledge, there will be seen again the spirit of the ardent upholder of slavery; or that of the milder advocate of it; or the sincere Christian; or the opportunist. The language has changed; the psychology of the respective contenders has not. Note the racialism or the lack of it in the case of the Negroes, too.
Scientific Opinions
Paul Broca, foremost French anthropologist of his day: “The union of the Negro with a white woman is frequently sterile while that of a white man with a Negress is perfectly fecund. This might tend to establish between the two races a species of hybridity analagous to that existing between goats and sheep which we have termed unilateral hybridity.” He adds that Professor Serres “fully alive to the gravity of the fact has given the following explanation,” namely, the length of the Negro male genital as compared with that of the Caucasian vagina.1
Dr. Franz Boas, noted anthropologist of Columbia University: “There is absolutely no biological evidence which would countenance the assumption that race intermixture of itself would have unfavorable results, that the children of white fathers and of mulatto or quadroon mothers would be inferior to their Negro ancestors. It would seem, therefore, to be in the interest of society to permit rather than restrain marriages between white men and Negro women. It would be futile to expect that our people would tolerate inter-marriage in the opposite direction although no scientific reason can be given that would prove them detrimental to the individual. Intermixture between white males and Negro females has been common ever since Negroes were brought to our continent, and the efficacy of the modern attempt to repress this intermingling is open to grave doubt.
“Thus it seems that man being what he is the Negro problem will not disappear in America until the Negro blood has been so much diluted that it will no longer be recognized just as anti-Semitism will not disappear until the last vestige of a Jew, as a Jew, has disappeared.”2
* * * * *
“I do not doubt that notwithstanding all legislation, intermixture between Negroes and whites will continue.
“I do not think there is any danger of deterioration of American manhood and destruction of American civilization involved …
“I do not think that the Negro is inherently inferior to the white. There may be reasons to think that the Negro may be slightly different when we consider the average of the two types, but there is no doubt that there are a great many family strains among the Negroes that are superior to many white strains …
“Amelioration of the race problem can be obtained by making it clear to people there is no instinctive feeling of one race against another, and by emphasizing that instinctive race feeling is merely an automatic reaction which is brought about by impressing upon the mind of children and young people the consciousness of the incompatibility of races.”3
“If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and