Inter-racial marriages

Interracial marriages (or miscegenation) is a self-explanatory title.

Such marriages were, in 1960, against the law in thirty-one of the United States, and in European-ruled (until 1993) South Africa. It was also illegal in National Socialist Germany.

Although the post WWII Allied Occupying Powers in Germany abolished these laws, it did not become legal throughout the United States until 1967, following the radical decision of the Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice Earl Warren in a case: Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia, violated the Equal Protection Clause (adopted in 1868) of the United States Constitution.

Examples which caused uproar

Seretse Khama, the future and first President of Botswana (then Bechuanaland), had married a Caucasian English girl in 1947 during his studies in London. This caused outrage and a furore, notably within his tribe. The Union of South Africa in particular opposed this marriage. Bechuanaland was a British Protectorate and a formal objection was made by South Africa through the London courts. The subsequent ruling included this note: "Under the provisions of the South Africa Act of 1909, the Union laid claim to the neighbouring tribal territories and, as the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations pointed out to the Cabinet in 1949, the 'demand for this transfer might become more insistent if we disregard the Union government's views'. He went on, 'indeed, we cannot exclude the possibility of an armed incursion into the Bechuanaland Protectorate from the Union if Serestse Khama were to be recognised forthwith, while feeling on the subject is inflamed'."