June 12 marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which held that states could no longer prohibit marriages on racial grounds.
“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren. Like an earlier landmark decision on race, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Loving opinion was unanimous and brief—just 10 pages long. It was also unsurprising.
For starters, nearly two decades earlier, in 1948, the California Supreme Court had already ruled that the state’s antimiscegenation law violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Court rulings aside, polling showed that racial attitudes among whites nationwide had shifted significantly in the postwar period. Between 1942 and 1963, white support for school integration grew to 62% from 30%, and white backing for neighborhood integration jumped to 64% from 35%. By the early 1960s, 79% of whites supported integrated public transportation, up from 44% in the early 1940s.