When was the first legal biracial marriage in the United States?
458881
Some states never had restrictions on interracial marriage.  For example, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire never had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.  However, many states did have such laws.  In 1967 the United States Supreme Court held that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional in the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia.  After that case was decided, all states had to permit interracial marriage.\n\nIf you want to read the case of Loving v. Virginia: http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/bclc/web/loving.htm\n\nHere is a map of the interracial marriage laws in different states from 1662-1967: http://www.lovingday.org/map.htm
747786
search here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States
15830
I believe different states have different guidelines.  Some allow first cousins to marry.
469868
Prior to 1967, many states had anti-miscegenation statutes.\n\n"Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restriction on marriage in the United States." The decision is based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.\n\nIt is technically possible that Alabama still has such a law on the books, but the law is unenforcable because it is unconstitutional.
731564
Yes\n\nThis is an African-American custom dating back to slavery.  Slaves were not allowed to officially marry, and this was a symbol for them.\n\nIt is called "Jumping the broom"\n\nThat should be a good start for you.
44406
the first white house wedding was held for  dolley madisons sister in 1812. that was the absolute first one.
240308
Women were in 1920 nationally.  Although a few states started allowing it earlier.  Wyoming was actually the first to allow it.  Blacks were allowed to vote after of course, the civil war.
434674
In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This suit began an eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that Scott remain a slave. This decision contributed to rising tensions between the free and slave states just before the American Civil War.
364706
could definitely do it in a weekend if its not a same sex marriage. could do it pretty much in a day in several states actually. you can go to tennessee one afternoon and get married in a courthouse.
197154
Actually, it's a federal law in the US:\n\nBigamy: Crime of marrying during the continuance of a lawful marriage. Bigamy is not committed if a prior marriage has been terminated by a divorce or a decree of nullity of marriage. In the United States if a husband or wife is absent and unheard of for seven (or in some states five) years and not known to be alive, he or she is presumed dead, and remarriage by the other spouse is not bigamous. It is not necessarily a defense to a charge of bigamy that the offending party believed in good faith that he was divorced or that his previous marriage was not lawful.\n\nThe U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1878 that plurality of wives (polygamy), as originally permitted by the Mormon religion, violated criminal law and was not defensible as an exercise of religious liberty. The Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy in 1890, but the practice has persisted among some, although it has been rarely prosecuted.
884821
I did some brief research and here is the best answer I can come up with in a few minutes: Washington has no civil-law (Spanish, French) tradition. It can be assumed that its community property concept came by way of California. If I had not done the research, I would have thought that its adoption of CP was to take advantage of income splitting for federal income tax; I recall from a lecture of years ago that CP was enacted in several states for that reason, and that Congress then made income splitting (joint returns) generally available to married couples.)\n\nIn fact, Washington CP dates from territorial times: a law of 1869, repealed in 1871 and substituted by "marital partnership". In 1873 that law was repealed and 5 days later the 1869 law was restored.\n\nOf course you may not be referring to community property at all, but to "common law marriage", in which case the answer is "not in modern times, at least not for other than tribal Native Americans": http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/pg/2/objectId/709FAEE4-ABEA-4E17-BA34836388313A3C/catId/697DBAFE-20FF-467A-9E9395985EE7E825/118/304/192/FAQ/\n\nOr you could simply be asking whether Washington ever embrace the Civil Code, the way Louisiana and Puerto Rico and Quebec do; tthe answer to that is "no". (There was a movement to introduce the codification in California, but it failed; for research on that, look up "David Dudley Field" and the case "Li v. Yellow Cab".)
176218
On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but under Louisiana law, he was considered black and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states" [3] . In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana. He found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car [4] . Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which upheld Ferguson's decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy's case and found him guilty once again. Speaking for a seven-person majority, Justice Henry Brown wrote: \n\n"That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the [Fourteenth A]mendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." [5] \nThe lone dissenter, Justice John Harlan, showed incredible foresight when he wrote \n\n"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution." [6] \nOver time, the words of Justice Harlan rang true. The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. Not until 1954, in the equally important Brown v. Board of Education decision, would the "separate but equal" doctrine be struck down.
212014
It's legal in some states to marry your cousin.
85234
You could say when it was implemented in 1868 since it never met Constitutional requirements for ratification.\n\nCertainly when supported by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Texas V. White in 1869.
120011
Shirley Chisholm is correct, but it was for the 1972 US Presidential campaign.  She officially announced her candidacy on January 25, 1971, so that is when she bacame the first woman and the first black person to run for President of the United States.
1042757
Because interracial marriage is between a man and a woman so it still falls under the accepted definition of marriage.  Gay marriage is a completely different concept.
197340
It's an old southern saying from the time of slaves. See the black slaves where not really allowed to marry so when the bride and groom jumped over the broom they thought they where married.