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Sidoti in 1984 that the custody of a child could not be denied to a parent because the parent was
involved in an interracial relationship (Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429 (1984)). Judges have
used federal fair housing laws to protect interracial couples from discrimination in housing, and
Title VII’s protections against employment discrimination have been used to alleviate
harassment and discrimination in the workplace aimed at individuals involved in interracial
relationships (Romano 2003: 248). Mississippi and South Carolina amended their constitutions
in 1987 and 1998 respectively to remove their bans on miscegenation (Id. at 250). As described
in the introduction, Alabama, the last state in the nation to have a constitutional provision
forbidding the legitimization of interracial marriage, eliminated that provision from its
constitution in 2000.
As Romano, Frankenberg, and other scholars point out, the elimination of formal legal
barriers to mixed-race relationships has not meant complete social acceptance for such
relationships. Interracial couples have continued to struggle with the reactions of their families
(particularly their white families) and their associates and friends (see Frankenberg 1993).
Developing ways of negotiating the identities of their children has been of particular concern
(see Romano 2003). Debate still rages over the conditions under which interracial adoption
should be permitted or encouraged (see Kennedy 2003; Moran 2001; Woodhouse 1995;
Bartholet 1999). While interracialism is increasingly a fact of life in the modern United States,
marriages between blacks and whites remain less common than intermarriages among other
racial groups and combinations, and interracial couples still must work to negotiate the
fragmented terrain of race in the twenty-first century.
Alabama’s Final Repudiation of the Formal Ban on Miscegenation
These tensions surfaced in the campaign to remove Alabama’s constitutional prohibition
on the legitimization of interracial relationships. State Representative Alvin Holmes, a black
Democrat from Montgomery, had long been concerned with his state’s troubled historical legacy.
A member of the legislature since 1974, in 1992 he and other black legislators had boycotted the
rededication of Alabama’s Capitol to protest Governor Guy Hunt’s flying of the Confederate
battle flag over it (Reeves 1992: B1). While the Capitol was closed for renovations previously,
Holmes and other black lawmakers had been arrested and convicted of trespassing when they
Convention