TIME Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.

Current subscribers for full access. Not a TIME subscriber? .

Maryland: Colorless Conjugality

Maryland (the "Free State"), which adopted the nation's first antimiscegenation statute in 1661 to keep white women servants from marrying Negro slaves, also passed one of the nation's last such laws in 1935. Aimed at preventing Filipino mess boys at the Naval Academy in Annapolis from taking all-too-willing local brides, it bars marriage of either whites or Negroes with "a member of the Malay race." So, when Jo Ann Kovacs, 25, a white Baltimore nurse, and Meki Toalepai, 26, a handsome singer-dancer-musician from Western Samoa, applied for a marriage license in Baltimore this month, they were refused. Maryland, the unhappy...

Time.com on Digg

POWERED BY digg

Quotes of the Day »

ADELE, multi Grammy-award winning singer, in an interview given to Vogue before last Sunday's ceremony, on her plans to take a lengthy break. Her last album 21 was inspired by a failed relationship but the Londoner is now "madly in love"
For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.