—husband three-fourths Creek and one-fourth Negro, wife three-fourths Creek and probably one-fourth white

More pointedly, the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 1923 upheld its miscegenation law because "the laws regulating marriages come clearly within the police power of the state, and, in the exercise of the state's sovereign right, it has the sole and only power within the state to regulate who shall, or who shall not, marry

Various states amended state constitutions to prohibit special and local legislation, including bills of divorcement, which had been greatly abused by lawyer members of the legislature by "log rolling" deals, so that a large number of divorces were granted by one act.

"A state, in the exercise of its sovereign power, has the right to impose upon its citizens an incapacity to contract marriage by means of a positive policy of the state for the*** good order of society*** and this law applies to marriages between all citizens alike since statehood was proclaimed, notwithstanding reservations in the Enabling Act, Constitution, or Amendments to …

—for example, James Grayson and Myrtle Segro were each three-fourths Indian, but the other fourth proved decisive.

Moreover, Oklahoma held its prohibition pre cluded Indians from marrying persons of "African descent."

RHODES, ANNULment of MARRIAGE (1945); MANGUM, THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE NEGRO 236 et seq.; REUTER, RACE MIXTURE-STUDIES IN INTERMARRIAGE AND MISCEGENATION 81 (1931). "

The problems involved with determining whether a person was black or white—and hence entitled to attend the better schools—demonstrate the complex involvement of the state in the defining race and maintaining segregation.

In Blake v. Sessions 1923), the justices branded the antimiscegenation law "a positive policy of the state" for the protection of the "morals and good order of society against social evils

[BOOK] Societal Stress and Law

[PDF] School of Applied Social Sciences School of Applied Social Sciences De …

[BOOK] The folly of Jim Crow: Rethinking the segregated south

[CITATION] Volume XXX Spring 2010 Number 2