In Pace v. Alabama (1883) the Supreme Court upheld an Alabama statute prohibiting interracial relationships. A black man named Tony Pace and a white woman named Mary Cox were indicted in November 1881 for living together in an adulterous relationship, convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison.
The Alabama statute in question went “If any man and woman live together in adultery or fornication, each of them must, on the first conviction of the offense, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than six months. On the second conviction for the offense with the same person, the offender must be fined not less than three hundred dollars, and may be imprisoned in the county jail, or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than twelve months, and for a third or any subsequent conviction with the same person, must be imprisoned in the penitentiary, or sentenced to hard labor for the county for two years,” and "If any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years.”
The couple were not actually married as they could not legally marry in Alabama. They appealed to the state supreme court, firstly on the grounds that Cox’s middle name was given incorrectly on the indictment. This was rejected as irrelevant and meaningless and the court upheld the statute on the grounds that its primary aim was to prevent the conception of mixed race children arising from such a relationship since it could lead to “a mongrel population and a degraded civilization.”The couple appealed to the Supreme Court on equal protection clause grounds. The Court ruled unanimously to uphold the Alabama statute. Justice Stephen Field delivered the unanimous opinion for the case. Field wrote that neither party was discriminated against since the statute prescribed equal criminal penalties for both the black and white individual in the relationship.Pace was overturned by Loving v. Virginia eighty-four years later when the Supreme Court ruled that state bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional.
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>>18449381>Pace was overturned by Loving v. Virginia eighty-four years later when the Supreme Court ruled that state bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional.Not exactly. What happened in Loving was the appellants married in Washington D.C. and Virginia refused to recognize their marriage. This violated Article IV Section I of the Constitution since states must recognize legal contracts made in other states (ok D.C. is not a state, but even so). The appellants in Pace on the other hand were not married.
