On September 17, 1630, a man named Hugh Davis was tied up and whipped in colonial Virginia after being sentenced for a serious crime. His audience was a crowd of Black people. But Davis wasn’t Black. He was white.
Davis’ punishment was a warning. According to the Virginia Assembly, Davis was “defiling his body in lying with a negro.” But he wasn’t the last person to be punished for “miscegenation,” or interracial relations.
White supremacy maintains the lie that whiteness is distinct from and superior to Blackness.
It was fine for white people to rape Black people. But consensual love shared between equal partners was dangerous because it implied Black people were equally able to give consent. So, all interracial lovers had to be punished.
Cases like 1881’s Pace v. State of Alabama solidified the criminal status of interracial marriage. And while Loving v. Virginia outlawed interracial marriage bans in 1967, Alabama’s anti-miscegenation ban wasn’t repealed until 2000.
Criminalizing interracial love has never been about “purity.” We have the right to freely choose whether or not to love interracially. Either way, we all deserve to love, be loved and be free from the abuses of anti-Blackness.