Tell the Court I Love My Wife

The first in-depth history of miscegenation law in the United States, this book illustrates in vivid detail how states, communities, and the courts have defined and regulated mixed-race marriage from the colonial period to the present. Combining a storyteller's detail with a historian's analysis, Peter Wallenstein brings the sagas of Richard and Mildred Loving and countless other interracial couples before them to light in this harrowing history of how individual states had the power to regulate one of the most private aspects of life: marriage.

The first history of how the law has defined - and often outlawed - interracial marriage in America.

Peter Wallenstein is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is the author of From Slave South to New South and Virginia Tech, Land Grant University, 1872-1997.

"For he has unearthed many true stories that make the reader's heart ache for the sufferings of real people..." --Harriet P. Gross, Dallas Morning News

"Wallenstein compellingly traces the legal intersection between race and sex..." --Booklist

"His compelling analysis delivers a superb legal history of interracial marriage...filling a remarkable void in the literature..." --Library Journal

"...a comprehensive, almost encyclopedic, history of the law of interracial marriage in America..." --Paul Moreno, History: Reviews of New Books

"Tell the Court I Love My Wife is a remarkable study by a splendid scholar who takes a fresh look at the history of miscegenation. Peter Wallenstein's impressive research and lively writing explores issues and questions of racial identity, marriage and property rights, law and power in the long sweep of American history. All Americans who believe that the right to marry someone of a different racial identity is sacrosanct need to read this spirited and thoughtful book." --Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University and co-editor of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia