6.26.2006

We Are So Slow To Respond To Societal Changes

I was listening to a recording of NPR's This American Life this weekend which involved a story about an interracial couple in the 1960s in the South and the difficulties they faced. As I was driving along, the narrator said that a state statute prevented the couple from getting married because the Supreme Court didn't declare such laws unconstitutional until 1967. 1967! You gotta be kidding me. I looked it up. It's true. Here's the text of the statute: "If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not lass than one nor more than five years."