Revisiting The Hollow Hope: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Repeal of Interracial Marriage Restrictions

Posted in Law, Media Archive, Papers/Presentations, United States on 2009-10-07 01:41Z by Steven

Revisiting The Hollow Hope: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Repeal of Interracial Marriage Restrictions

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Atlanta Hilton Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia
2003-08-13

21 pages

Nancy Martin

This paper outlines a research proposal for the analysis of the state-by-state repeal of interracial marriage restrictions, and particularly the role of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in this process. Rosenberg (1991) argues that the Supreme Court actions are largely inconsequential to progress and social reform. This proposal develops the repeal of interracial marriage restrictions as an important test case for Rosenberg’s theory.  What happened at the state-level in the years leading up to and after the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision declaring interracial marriage prohibitions unconstitutional?  Was this decision a key moment in ensuring the repeal of these laws in Southern states? Alternatively, was Loving v. Virginia (1967) nothing more than a punctuation mark in the already advancing progress of state-level reforms?  This project has the potential to make three important contributions: update our knowledge on the history of state-by-state repeal of interracial marriage laws; confirm, modify or extend Rosenberg’s thesis from The Hollow Hope; and provide valuable insights for contemporary activists who continue to work for social reforms.

Read the entire paper here.

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