Supreme Court Anniversaries: Loving v. Virginia

"Cohabitating as man and wife against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth"

 

 Rats tickled her feet.

 

Mildred sat in a dirty jail cell, some months pregnant, while rats crawled along the floor. Her husband's family managed to pay the bail for him, but she was stuck until the authorities felt like letting her go. Although they were arrested together, her white husband Richard found more sympathy from the state of Virginia than she did, as a woman of mixed racial background.  Their crime, classified as a felony under state law, was simply being married to one another.

 

Virginia, like many other southern states, had passed "anti-miscegenation laws" in the early 1920s to prohibit interracial marriage to protect the "dignity" of the white supremacist philosophy that ruled the South with an iron grip.

 

They were ultimately released, but banished from Virginia for 25 years. Mildred and Richard Loving moved to Washington D.C., where they hoped their union would be more accepted. However, city life and ostracism took their toll; they missed their friends and families deeply in Virginia, and the big city was too dirty, expensive and chaotic. They simply wanted to go back to their quiet little hamlet and live peacefully, surrounded by those they loved.

 

Although the Supreme Court would ultimately rule in their favor, it took nine long years for Richard and Mildred's marriage to be officially recognized in 1967. The June decision in Loving v. Virginia formally legalized interracial marriage throughout the United States, as 24 states still had laws against miscegenation. However, despite the ruling, many states were reluctant to amend state law in accordance with federal law, and Alabama became the final state to remove all language referencing miscegenation in 2000.

 

Loving marks a triumph for love and civil rights. Today approximately 12 percent of marriages are interracial, and couples, married or not, no longer have to fear the state invading their intimate privacy on the grounds of racial differences.

 

To learn more about the Lovings or the history of interracial marriage in the U.S., check out these titles:

 

Essential Supreme Court Decisions: Summaries of Leading Cases in U.S. Constitutional Law 

 

Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving

 

Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law

 

Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law: An American History

 

-Ariel Slick

Coffee through the ages

You almost certainly know people who drink coffee every day. You might even be one of those people.

Has coffee always been a staple in American households?

Daily Life through History is an academic source that displays a cross-section of everyday life over time and around the globe. This database, provided by ABC-CLIO, offers images, recipes, stories, and discussions that help students go beyond mere facts and statistics.

Use the Advanced Search feature to search for articles about coffee. Choose from a menu of categories, eras, regions, and subjects.

Here are some examples from a recent search for information about coffee in Europe and North America.

• 17th Century Western Europe: Coffeehouses “emerged in the major cities of Western Europe after 1650 as venues for the consumption of the newly introduced beverages coffee, tea, and chocolate.”
• 17th Century America: Before Pennsylvania built a public building for its legislature, the governing Assembly met in private homes, inns, or coffeehouses.
• 19th Century: Cowboys and Civil War soldiers drank coffee every day.
• 20th Century: During the Great Depression, real coffee was scarce. Some American families brewed a mixture of wheat bran, cornmeal, eggs, and molasses as a substitute for coffee.

 Pre-WWI bread line. Library of CongressLOC collection via Flickr.

To get to Daily Life through History, follow this path:

1. Go to the Richland library webpage at http://www.richlandcollege.edu/library.
2. Look for the green tabs in the middle of the home page and click on “Databases."
3. Click on the “D” on the A-Z list.
4. Scroll down and click on the "Daily Life through History” link.

Pros:

• Articles are typically short and easy to read.
• The authors provide suggestions for further reading.
• The citation in MLA format is posted at the end of each article.

Con:

• This database is not useful for students who need current information. The most recent pieces on President Barack Obama, for example, are from 2011.

Here is a link to the search results for "coffee."  Students, instructors, and staff with current DCCCD I.D. can log on with their I.D. information.

~From Richland Librarian Terri C. 

Question of the week: War by the numbers

Often our students are looking for statistics on deaths, crimes, births, voting rates, marriages, or accidents.

This week, a Richland student needed to know the number of civilian deaths in Germany and Japan during World War II. She had searched the Internet but didn't find what she wanted, so she came to the library reference desk for an old-fashioned encyclopedia.

Moving over to the D* shelves, we pulled a couple of titles including The Oxford Companion to World War II.

It turned out that this 1301-page book was just what our student needed. Chock full of maps, lists, definitions, and photos, the alphabetical volume includes a short section called "demography of the war." This section lists war-related deaths and breaks them down into military and civilian losses.

Not near our desk or book shelves? Students across campus or off campus might want to try accessing an online reference for this type of question. The Encyclopædia Britannica Online is available to current DCCCD students, faculty, and staff. 

Go to http://www.richlandcollege.edu/library. Click on the green "Databases" tab; at the next screen, click on "E"; and at the next screen, scroll down to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" link. Click through, and log on with your school I.D.

If you search for "costs of the war," you should find an article on war-related losses.

Now back to the question: What were the costs of war?

Japan lost some 350,000 civilians during the war, and Germany lost 2,000,000; these numbers are considered unreliable, according the The Oxford Companion, so we may never know the answer.

Keep searching,
R.D. 

Dear, Ian, and Michael Richard. The Oxford companion to World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1995. Print.

*What are the D shelves? Great question! Richland Library uses the Library of Congress classification system to shelve books, and D is the section in which books about world history and the history of Europe are shelved.

History of crayons

National Geographic has published a book we have in the library called An Uncommon History of Common Things. For more history of everyday items, stay tuned to this blog or come see this book and others like it in the library!

History of crayons

"The word 'crayon' is French for chalk or pencil, but when an American mentions 'crayons,' others know that she's referring to the colorful wax writing instruments perfected by entrepreneurs Edwin Binney and Harold Smith in the late 19th century. Binney & Smith first produced deep red pigments for barns and country buildings but soon began manufacturing slate pencils, and then dustless chalk for teachers. While traveling to schools for that product, the pair saw a need for reliable colored drawing implements, and their combo of paraffin wax and pigment went on the market for the first time in 1903 as Crayola, a name that signifies 'oily chalk.'"

What do you know about Texas?

Quick! What is the Texas state insect? The official large mammal? What color is the Texas state tartan? What is the origin of the name of the Lavaca River?

The answers to these and many other questions regarding "all things Texan" can be found in the latest edition of the Texas Almanac. The Texas Almanac has a long and interesting history. Now in its 65th edition, the Almanac was first published in 1857 and has been regularly issued annually or biennially with few interruptions to the present day. This new edition of the Texas Almanac is the first one to be published by the Texas State Historical Association. Editor Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez states in the Dallas Morning News, "This edition of the Texas Almanac is the most comprehensive and colorful edition yet." Every library, home or office should have a copy.

Had I known about the pronunciation guide in the Texas Almanac when I first moved to San Antonio back in the early 1960's I wouldn't have been so confused about the name of the county in which I resided. I kept reading about Bexar County and never related it to the county name I was hearing on the news. Bexar, for the new-to-Texas reader, is pronounced BA ar, not BEX ar.

You can read more about the Texas Almanac on their Web site (http://www.texasalmanac.com/) or in the Dallas Morning News. Better yet, stop by the Richland College Library reference desk and have fun browsing the beautiful new edition.