Legal Progression of Marriage in America :: Essays Papers

lawful Progression of Marriage in AmericaAs the British colonies in North America took root, a great part of the economic development in colonial society was predicated on the labor of imported African slaves. As the number of slaves increased significantly, especially in the southern colonies, a establishment of separation of the races was realized. Since the beginning of the White and Black coexistence in America, Whites induce suppressed the rights of Blacks in order to emphasize their racial superiority and to negative mixing between the races. In order to maintain their racial purity, Whites formal laws making illegal the marriage of Blacks and Whites. Although anti-miscegenation laws were present in early colonial societies, the legacies meet continued in the contemporary period. For example, Alabama amended its typography in 2000 to acknowledge interracial marriages as valid and legal. For over three hundred years, anti-miscegenation laws have remained chiefly the s ame, outlawing marriages between people of different races. Overtime, however, definitions of who is Black have drastically changed, reflecting the status of Blacks in society. Anti-miscegenation laws during the era of slavery defined Blacks as having at least one Black grandparent, or one get Black blood. Later, these same laws during the Great Migration of the twentieth century, evolved to define Blacks by the One Drop Rule, a rule stating that one was Black if he or she had at least one Black ancestor. These laws, as represent in this paper and based on the policies of the colony and state of Virginia, were employ to maintain a separation of races and, thus, to preserve the purity of Whites and to guarantee their system of White supremacy.Sent by King James I, The Virginia Company established the first colony in America in 1607 appropriately named Jamestown (History of Jamestown 1). It is generally accepted that the first Blacks were imported to America in 1619, only dozen ye ars after the colony was established. At this point, no specific laws taboo interracial relations, but societal taboos and religious doctrines were enough to separate Whites and Blacks from versed contact. Such beliefs were noted in the proceedings between the governor and his council inwardly the colony In 1630, a man named Hugh Davis, accused of being familiar involved with a Black, was to be soundly whipped before an assembly of inkinesses and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of Christians by defiling his body and lying with a Negro (Hall 602).