Ideas about love, and who can love who, often coalesced around the concept of miscegenation - marriage and or sexual relations between different races. Mainly, the idea reflects fears, spoken and unspoken, about the vulnerability of white supremacy in a changing American political and cultural environment.
Ultimately, thirty-eight states enacted laws preventing interracial marriages, from Virginia in 1691 to Wyoming in 1913. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all laws banning interracial marriage, in the decision known as Loving v. Virginia.
This map presents laws against interracial marriage as they varied from state to state. For the states that enacted such laws, we also showcase newspaper clippings, courtesy of newspapers.com, that reflect their impact on countless Americans. Many of them are love stories, but all are stories of political struggle and transgression.