Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law--An American History
Wallenstein uses the 1967Lovingcase, in which a Virginia couple challenged laws against interracial marriage, as a pivot point for examining racial definitions and relations in the U.S. By its ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court finally outlawed so-called antimiscegenation laws and amended the patchwork of laws stating who was black or white and what constituted interracial marriage. Wallenstein compellingly traces the legal intersection between race and sex from the pre-Civil War focus on liaisons between black men and white women to later concerns about the inheritance implications of white former masters acknowledging their children born of slave women. He also examines the social intricacies affecting the evolution of the legal meaning ofblack.Because laws varied from state to state--and even within a state--couples such as the Lovings found themselves living in a legal limbo. But Wallenstein also appropriately explores the changes in social attitudes that saw racial definitions move from fluid to rigid and to the current state of increasing racial and ethnic diversity that defies easy definition.Vernon FordCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.