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In reply to the discussion: I'm a multiracial woman, of primarily African descent and I an VERY happily [View all]Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)From the year, 1972, we can derive that she meant the state of Georgia:
Quote: "Georgia took five years to repeal the anti-miscegenation statutes from its books, in 1972. However, while indeed the reaction to Loving was muted in Georgia as well as the other Southern states normally associated with racist tendencies, Georgia nonetheless did have a few instances where the state refused to comply with the order and refused to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples.
"One such incident was noted in a New York Times May 21, 1971 article, where the Justice Department filed a suit against the state of Georgia and a county official, H.W. Roberts, for refusing to issue a marriage license to white Army lieutenant John Ray Sanford (at Fort Benning, Georgia) and his black fiancée, Betty Byrom of Mountain View, Georgia. The United States District Court in Atlanta issued a temporary restraining order against Roberts and forced him to grant the license. This incident does suggest that while the 1967 decision had immediate repercussions in some of the Northern states, and especially Virginia, Georgia still lumbered to its reality and county officials still often used their personal discretion in refusing to grant marriage licenses.
"They were, however, normally forced to do so once the federal courts got involved. The other interesting observation was that Georgia did not immediately remove the anti-miscegenation statutes from its books until five years after the 1967 decision, when Virginia had done so in 1968 and West Virginia, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri in 1969. Although Georgia could not actively enforce its anti-miscegenation statutes during that time, the delay is significant in representing Georgians belief that white-black marriages and sexual relations were not natural. That perhaps was the reason why the Justice Department had to offer respite to interracial couples quite often, especially during those five years in between from 1967 to 1972, as the 1971 case indicates. Although enforceability had been dismantled, the simmering ideology underneath was too potent for jurisdiction to completely eradicate."
More on Georgia at this link: http://mgagnon.myweb.uga.edu/students/3090/05FA3090-Paul.htm