It MAY have been a huge story in the South, and may have led to a great outcry there.
But in New York, where I grew up, interracial marriage was already legal, and the story barely made the news at all.
In at least a few states, it was pretty openly used as a wedge issue to drive right-leaning voters to the polls and boost GOP candidates. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I think it backfired in the long run; the vast majority of Americans under age 30 see these amendments and other roadblocks as being just plain mean.
The actual number is 41 out of 50 states (not 43 out of 50) having banned interracial marriage at some point.
Nine states (plus the District of Columbia) never did:
New York
New Jersey
Connecticut
Vermont
New Hampshire
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Alaska
Hawaii
On the map I previously linked, scroll the mouse over those states and you’ll see they come up “Never had restrictions”
:o You know what, I think I’m just going to walk away from this thread and never look back.
I was 11, and don’t remember anything about it. And we were (temporarily) living in VA at the time. Of course I was more concerned with building tree forts and such than reading the newspaper or paying attention to Walter Cronkite.
I was six, and don’t recall it either. I do recall the disapproval from my dad on seeing any interracial couple, well into the 1970s.
I doubt you had as much reason to be interested in the topic as I did. It didn’t involve your family and you weren’t writing an essay about it.
I’d still like to know how people reacted at the time, but I can’t turn up anything online so I’ve come to the conclusion that my best bet is to go to the university a few minutes from my house and see if they have a newspaper archive to check editorials, news items and letters to the editor from that time. This is the Deep South so here’s where the laws were struck down because here’s people thought interracial marriage was wrong (to put it mildly).
Because I’m still curious to know if they (the South) threw as much of a hissy fit back then with public officials basically throwing toddler-style fits saying they’re not going to do it.