“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents… The fact that he [God] separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix” (Leon M. Bazile). This was the argument used by Judge Bazile to banish an interracial couple from Virginia for 25 years. 23 year-old Richard Loving and 17 year-old Mildred Jeter, an African American, married in 1958 in the District of Columbia where miscegenation, or interracial marriage, was legal. Only weeks later they moved to Virginia, where they were jailed in violation of anti-miscegenation laws. Judge Bazile sentenced the couple to a year in prison, which would be postponed if they left Virginia for 25 years. Five years later, Loving…show more content… Madison Grant, the forefather of Eugenic Law, was an influential Eugenicist with strong beliefs, “The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white and a negro is a negro… When it becomes thoroughly understood that the children of mixed marriages between contrasted races belong to the lower type, the importance of transmitting in unimpaired purity the blood inheritance of ages will be appreciated at its full value” (Grant, Madison). Grant, like Judge Bazile, wanted to maintain the purity of each race because he believed “inferior” races had less favorable genetics compared to whites. Eugenic Law favored the procreation of whites to improve human genetics and the sterilization of “inferior” races such as African Americans, essentially an elitist Klu Klux Klan (Eugenics Movement). Loving v. Virginia eliminated Eugenic Law entirely because there were no longer laws prohibiting the mixing of races, so the “purity” Eugenicists strived for was no longer achievable. Seventeen states were directly affected by Loving v. Virginia, all seventeen of those southern states were forced to annul any bans on interracial marriage (See Figure 1). White supremacy was slowly being broken down because groups similar to Eugenics had no basis since diversity in America was increasing and races were beginning to intertwine.
