Interracial marriages in Maryland |
Interracial marriages in Maryland
Public Health Reports
Volume 85, Number 8 (August 1970)
pages 739-747
Sidney M. Norton, Director of the Bureau of Vital Records
Baltimore City Health Department, Baltimore, Maryland
Also Lecturer, Department of Chronic Diseases
School of Hygiene and Public Health
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
A Statistical Report
Nullification of all miscegenation legislation in Maryland became effective June 1, 1967, by action of the Maryland General Assembly in September 1966. Laws were repealed(a) penalizing ministers who had united persons of the white and Negro races in marriage and (b) prohibiting marriages between the white and Negro races and members of the Malay race. The State of Maryland took more than 300 years to remove from its statutes the law banning marriages between whites and Negroes—an act the Supreme Court subsequently held had infringed on an individual’s freedom of choice to marry, which should not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.
Methodology
The data in my report refer to recorded interracial marriages in the State from June 1, 1967, to December 31, 1968. I have emphasized the types of intermarriages occurring most frequently: (a) those between whites and Negroes, (b) between whites and Orientals, and (c) between whites and members of the Malay race.
The following procedures are observed in all marriage license bureaus in the State. Either of the contracting parties may apply for the license. After the couple is sworn in by a clerk of the court, the marriage laws of Maryland are quoted to them, and a series of questions relating to the prospective groom and bride are asked. Their replies are given under oath and entered on the application form for the marriage license by the clerk of the court. The questions include name, residence, age, color, nativity, marital status, and information concerning former marriages, if any.
Criteria used to identify and classify the various races were based on guidelines established for court clerks when issuing marriage licenses to couples of different races. The following racial delineations were contained in a memorandum from a Maryland deputy attorney general to the clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in Baltimore:
- The white race is made up of the Caucasian peoples of the world.
- The Negro race is the black race.
- The yellow race is made up of the Mongolian peoples and includes the Chinese and Japanese.
- The Malay race is the brown race and includes the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula and Oceania. The Polynesian race is a branch of the Malay race.
- The red race is made up of the American Indians.
The directive also stated that under Maryland law, the following persons may legally intermarry:
- Persons of the white race with persons of the red and yellow races.
- Persons of the yellow race with persons of the white, Malay, red, and Negro races.
- Persons of the Negro race with persons of the red and yellow races.
- Malayans with persons of the red and yellow races.
- Persons of the red race with persons of the white, Negro, Malay, and yellow races.
- Persons of the same race.
The following statutory provisions relate to marriages in Maryland: (a) the minimum age at marriage is 18 years for a man and 16 years for a woman except if the woman is pregnant or has given birth to a child and (b) the clerk of any court in which a marriage is licensed or recorded is required to transmit a report of eachmarriage to the State department of health.
Records of marriages filed with the Maryland State Department of Health during the study period were investigated to ascertain the number and types of interracial marriages and to analyze particular characteristics of grooms and brides (age, marital status, and resident status), political subdivision of the State in which the marriage had taken place, and type of ceremony for each such marriage.
Results
Of the 512 interracial marriages in Maryland from June 1, 1967, through December 31, 1968 (table 1), 310 were between whites and Negroes. Twice as many Negro men and white women intermarried as white men and Negro women. For the first 7 months of the study (June 1 through December 31, 1967), the ratio of Negro men marrying white women, compared with white men marrying Negro women, was 2.6 to 1; in 1968 the proportion was 1.8 to 1.
White-Malay marriages occurred 1.6 times more often between Malay grooms and white brides than between white grooms and Malay brides. The ratio between these two types of unions was slightly higher for the 7-month period in 1967 than in 1968. About an equal number of white men married Oriental women (46) as Oriental men (44) selected white women…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Maryland, Public Health Reports, S. M. Norton, Sidney M. Norton, Sidney Norton