What Happened to Interracial Couples in America ?

Now apartheid has almost reduced in America. Rather, America has removed it brilliantly but it was not so before the 1970s. You may not know that interracial marriage has been legal in the United States since 1967! But before then, there was widespread racial segregation based on colour in America. For example, a white plantation owner (in the first half of the nineteenth century) could enslave any dark-skinned people under his command.

But it was quite harsh when there was a love affair or marriage between a white woman and a black man. But what would have happened if a white woman had an affair with a black man in nineteenth-century America?

In the pre-Civil War South of the 1860s, a wealthy, white, older plantation woman, or the widow of a respectable gentleman, could make good use of her young black slaves. Many such stories are famous.

What would have happened in America if a White Woman was caught with a Black man?

What happened to the black man? In reality, everything depended on the place, time, and social status of the white woman and her dark-skinned partner.

In America, fair-skinned women had love affairs with black men, but it was very dangerous at that time. Neither society, nor the law, nor the Catholic Church showed mercy in this matter.

Sometimes, when a white woman was caught with a dark-skinned man, the white woman would always try to put all the responsibility on her dark-skinned lover. It was natural for the woman to do so because she was in danger of being beaten to death along with a black man.

It is true that in the first half of the twentieth century, the United States had become quite civilised and lynchings had decreased significantly, but even during this time, if a white woman who wanted to approach a black man had to do so in white America, she had to face a public social boycott.

America before 19th century — before 1970s in America

This was particularly evident in the American South compared to North America, where until the 1970s racial segregation laws prohibited blacks from staying in the same hotels or riding buses with whites.

If a white woman gave birth to a black child as a result of an illicit partnership, it was possible for the newborn to be sold into slavery or given to an orphanage in order to preserve the honour of white American families and not “embarrass” them. Or they may be saved from society or conservative religious people.