Global South World - interracial https://www.globalsouthworld.com en-US When love was still a crime: The 1966 U.S. map of interracial marriage bans https://www.globalsouthworld.com/article/when-love-was-still-a-crime-the-1966-us-map-of-interracial-marriage-bans https://www.globalsouthworld.com/article/when-love-was-still-a-crime-the-1966-us-map-of-interracial-marriage-bans?feed=interracial Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:20:21 Z Global South World The World in Maps The World in Maps In 1966, interracial marriage was still illegal in many U.S. states, mostly across the South. It 1 In 1966, the United States was still deeply divided on the most personal of civil rights, who you could marry.

The map above shows how, even as much of the country had legalised interracial marriage, a swath of states, primarily in the South, still enforced laws that made it illegal for people of different races to wed.

These “anti-miscegenation” laws were among the last vestiges of institutionalised segregation. According to the online timeline of marriage laws, more than one-third of U.S. states had such bans well into the 1960s.

The watershed moment came on June 12, 1967, when the Loving v. Virginia decision by the Supreme Court of the United States declared that laws prohibiting marriage between people of different races were unconstitutional, saying that “the freedom to marry … resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

However, the map from 1966 reminds us that until that ruling, countless couples faced legal prohibitions simply because of their race.

Some states’ bans lingered on the books long after they became unenforceable — for example, the state of Alabama didn’t officially remove its constitutional prohibition against interracial marriage until a voter referendum in the year 2000.

Why this history still matters

At first glance, these laws might seem like a chapter from long ago, but they speak directly to ongoing debates about equality, identity and the meaning of marriage. For example:

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