Later, the Jews, who in their days of power had called themselves “God’s Chosen People,” as the Chinese called themselves “Sons of Heaven,” were to get a dose of their own medicine. The Romans of the time of Juvenal, first century A.D., made slaves of them and treated them very badly. As for marriage, Christian Rome severely banned marriage of one of them with a Christian, white or black. The earliest English code, that of the seventh century A.D., forbade any union of Christian and Jew, and inflicted a penance of as high as twelve years on any woman who had illicit sex relations with a Jew.7 A Spanish law of 1348 condemned to death any Jew going with a Christian woman, even though she were a prostitute. In Avignon, France, the penalty for the same was a fine of twenty-five French pounds and the loss of a limb “for each offense.” The outlawing of any sexual relations between Jews and Christians was revived by Hitler in 1935.
WHO IS A NEGRO? EUROPEAN TYPES—GERMAN
I Leopold I, Emperor of Germany, by Thomas of Ypres (New York Public Library Coll.) Compare his features with those of Kamehameha II, on opposite page.
WHO IS A NEGRO? OCEANIC TYPE
II. Kamehameha II of Hawaii (Compare his features with those of Leopold I, Emperor of Germany, on opposite page).
Whites of the Same Race and Religion Who Could Not Marry
In northern Europe white peoples also had laws banning marriage between themselves and other whites of the same religion and nationality but of the lower class. Professor E. A. Ross says: “Thus among the Saxons of the eighth century social divisions were cast-iron and the law punished with death the man who should presume to marry a woman of rank higher than his own. The Lombards killed the serf who ventured to marry a free woman, while the Visigoths and Burgundians scourged and burned them both …”8
The English upper class of the eleventh century treated white women of the lower class in a manner that reminds one of how their descendants, the Virginia colonists, treated black women. William of Malmesbury, English historian of the twelfth century, tells how the nobles used “to sell their female servants when pregnant and after they had satisfied their lust either to public prostitution or foreign slavery.” He tells of another noblewoman who used to buy up the most beautiful slave girls and sell them at a profit in Denmark.9
When the Normans ruled England they regarded the Anglo-Saxons, a whiter complexioned people than they, in the same manner as the Americans slaveholders regarded the Negroes. Macaulay says: “In the time of Richard I the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was: ‘May I become an Englishman.’ His ordinary form of indignant denial was: ‘Do you take me for an Englishman?’ In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced.”
Of the marriage of the Norman king, Henry I, to Edith, an Anglo-Saxon princess, Macaulay says it “was regarded as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia.”10
During the Middle Ages, and well into the eighteenth century, the Catholics, who were then in power forbade whites who were of the faith to marry whites who were not of the faith. This was particularly so in Spain, Austria, Italy and France. Marriage between Catholic and non-Catholic is still either forbidden or frowned on by the Catholic Church.
The English and the Irish
None of the above-mentioned prohibitions, however, reached the severity of the ban against the marriage of English to Irish, who were then both Catholic. The Statutes of Kilkenny issued in 1367 by Edward III of England show how far one white group can go in prohibiting marriage with another white group. The worst that Virginia has to offer between that of white and black is almost beneficent in comparison. The English soldier in Ireland, cut off from all women, except Irish ones, who dared to have an amour with an Irishwoman, was guilty of high treason, the punishment for which was death in the most horrible manner. He was “half-hanged, cut down, disembowelled alive and forfeited his estate.11 Under Cromwell, too, there were heavy penalties against an Englishman for taking an Irish wife. Soldiers who had an amour with an Irish girl were severely flogged.
According to Ringrose’s Marriage and Divorse Laws of the World (1924), the following marriages are still illegal: In Servia between Christian and non-Christian; in Sweden, heathens and atheists with Christians; in Morocco and Persia between Moslem and Jew. In all of the lands above-mentioned, with the exception of France during the time when the white colonists of Haiti had considerable influence there, no prohibition existed against the marriage of white and black on racial grounds. Portugal, the European land which had the largest percentage of Negroes, never had a color line.
Primitive dark-skinned peoples also had, and still have, anti-miscegenation laws. Among the Balinese, for instance, the penalty for marrying out of one‘s own caste was death, a punishment which the Dutch later had changed to imprisonment.12
In West Africa, the Mandingoes, once a ruling people, objected for centuries to marriage with the Kru, another black people. It is said they still do. Much the same is true of certain other African peoples.
Irish, Quakers, and Jews in Colonial America
The United States has probably never had a law against the marriage of one white group to another white group, but it had what amounted virtually to one in the case of three groups: the Irish, the Quakers and the Jews.
The Puritans of New England, it seems, brought with them their hostility to the Irish. In 1652, when David Sellacke, a ship captain merely permitted some Irish members of his crew to come ashore in Boston he was heavily fined. It appears they had only done so to bring ashore one of their sick. Sellacke’s fine was later remitted but he was ordered to see that the Irishman was taken aboard as soon as he got well. Martha Benton, a housewife, was given permission to import two servants from Ireland provided she could prove they were of English ancestry. In 1654, Virginia forced all Irish into bondage for five years, and later classed them with aliens. Maryland, between 1704 and 1720 passed twelve laws against the Irish, one of which increased the tax on any importation of them to five pounds sterling. South Carolina offered a bonus of thirteen pounds for every colonist brought in but he was not to be Irish; and on May 10, 1729, Pennsylvania barred all Irish.
In August 1834, mobs in Boston beat every Irish person found on the street, burnt their homes and the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown. On September 12, 1837 when the Montgomery Guards (named after General Montgomery, Revolutionary War hero) appeared to march in a parade, they were ordered home, and when they did not go, they were stoned by the mob.
In Philadelphia during the whole month of May 1844, the Irish were mobbed. On July 4th the same year there was another riot in that city, which lasted for three days in which cannon were used in the streets, more than a hundred persons killed or wounded; and two Irish churches and two rectories burned.
In New York City attempts were made to burn down St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was saved only by stationing sharpshooters at the windows. So great was the hatred of the Irish that the Negroes were forgotten. Scharf and Westcott say, “The spirit of riot and disorder which for some years had vented itself upon Negroes and mulattoes found an entirely new object.” In the cities of the North in apartments and stores the sign “No Irish need apply” was frequently seen.13
WHO IS A NEGRO? FILIPINO, AUSTRALIAN, ETHIOPIAN AND AMERICAN TYPES
III.