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

A year after they got married in Washington, D.C., Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested in their Virginia bedroom in 1959 for illegal cohabitation. Sentenced to one year in jail, the couple was told that the sentence would be suspended if they left the state and did not return for 25 years. They moved to Washington, and in 1963, launched a federal suit that challenged the constitutionality of antimiscegenation laws. Four years later, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Virginias law was unconsitutional, thus outlawing prohibitions on interracial marriage in that state, as well as in the 16 other states that had maintained such laws for two centuries. In this sweeping and often harrowing history of how states had the power to determine who oe could and could not marry, Peter Wallenstein reveals how antimiscegenation laws were stongly linked with political, cultural, and social attitudes about race in Americaand how these currents have changed over time.Wallenstein, Peter is the author of 'Tell the Court I Love My Wife Race, Marriage, and Law--An American History' with ISBN 9780312294748 and ISBN 0312294743.