Happy Martin Luther King…

Happy Martin Luther King Day! Not so long ago in much of the U.S., Kevin's and my marriage, if we had chosen to get married, would be illegal. Illinois is better than most (Maryland didn't repeal its anti-miscegenation laws until 1967), but still. Madness.

Sorry for the quiet -- Kevin was out of town for four days, and I was busy trying to stay sane while alone with baby. Sometimes Kavi gets on my very last nerve, and without Kevin to hand her off to in those moments -- well, let's just all be grateful for tv, shan't we?

He came back last night (thank the gods) and today I actually managed to get some work done, if somewhat interrupted by visits from both the masonry guy (we need to repair some tuckpointing, and can I say, I would have happily gone the rest of my life without needing to know what tuckpointing was?) and a realtor (as we are considering selling our condo).

Also interrupted, but in a good way, by Lori coming by, very much not in a mood to quietly write. :-) We hadn't seen each other in over a month, so we caught up instead and made plans for AWP and I finished the body of Brooke's sweater -- just two little sleeves to go, very exciting!

And now I have a bit of grading and a bit of prep and a somewhat painful grant application to do, so I'd best get back to work. It's going to be a long evening.

6 thoughts on “Happy Martin Luther King…”

  1. “Not in the mood to quietly write.” Understatement. I almost didn’t even bring my computer. Good to see you and catch up!

  2. In 1961, Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker rode the Greyhound from New York City to Detroit so that they could marry. If it had been from Mississippi, I wouldn’t find it surprising, but New York?!!

    With all of love,

    C. J. Czelling

  3. C.J.: Interracial marriage was illegal even in California until Perez v. Sharp in 1948.

    Wikipedia’s article on anti-miscegenation laws says: “A 1958 Gallup poll showed that 96 percent of white Americans dissapproved of interracial marriage.” (I’ve seen that poll and percentage cited elsewhere as well.)

    In 1967, when the US Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, 16 or 17 states (sources differ on the exact number) still had such laws–though not New York. (In fact, Wikipedia says New York never enacted such laws. But I don’t know whether that’s true or not.)

    Despite Loving v. Virginia, Alabama didn’t officially remove their anti-miscegenation ban until 2000.

    For some really scary stuff about miscegenation (it could “spell the downfall of our civilization”!), see Eugenics in America : Anti-miscegenation Laws, at facinghistory.org.

    …Anyway, I’m babbling — my point was meant to be that this idea that miscegenation is bad was astonishingly widespread in the US until remarkably recently. We’ve come a long way in a pretty short time — but that means that some parts of society still haven’t finished adjusting yet.

  4. Oops — those first two links go to the same place. Sorry about that — just ignore the second one.

    …Oh, and I should say that my comment wasn’t meant as a disagreement or argument with C.J.’s — more an agreement and expansion.

  5. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    David, the condo is lovely for right now, but is too small long-term, especially if we have a second child. We’d really both like separate studies for one, and ideally, a guest room that isn’t one of our studies. We spend so much time working at home, it’d be good to both have real work spaces there.

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