America s Miscegenation Anxiety And The State Of Virginia

Even through contradictory politics and the use of religion as justification in the formation and adherence to these segregation laws, the resolve of individuals have collectively played a tremendous role in racial equality in all facets of life. Before the Civil War, the Constitution gave rights, individual rights, only against the government. After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment clearly defined national citizenship and prohibited any single state to deprive any person of â€Å"life, liberty or property without due process of law,† to deny any citizen the â€Å"privileges and immunities† of citizenship, or to deny any person â€Å"the equal protection of the laws.† After the Supreme Court ultimately neutralized this amendment through its decision in†¦show more content†¦Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own j udgment in favour o f the whites, declared by their preference o f them, as uniformly as is the preference o f the Oran-ootan for the black women over those o f his own species. (Jefferson 186, italics mine) Reading Jefferson’s constructed history in Notes against his lived history—his own liaisons with women not â€Å"of his own species†Ã¢â‚¬â€enters us into the profound rhetorical contradictions of interracialism in America. In many cases, the success of the major legal battles during the Civil Rights era depended on the effort, courage, and tenacity of individuals. Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were two such individuals. By marrying one another, Richard being white, and Mildred being considered negro, Richard and Mildred broke the Virginia Racial Integrity Act