Radical Republican attempts to “burlesque Southern society”
“A Tale of Transition” by Albion Winegar Tourgée (1875)
“Thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people.” — Judges XIV:16 (as quoted in Toinette, 1875)
On the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court decision invalidating state laws prohibiting interracial marriage (decided four years to the day after the assassination of Medgar Evers), it’s worth remembering as a Tar Heel that North Carolina also passed a ban on “miscegenation” in an amendment to the state’s constitution in 1875. One hundred and forty-three years later, the Old North State would again amend its constitution to ban another type of marriage. Technically “Amendment 1” still exists in our state constitution, but it was overturned by another landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2015. As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”
