Obama’s Prom Photos
On prom night, the pair double-dated. Obama and his date Megan Hughes, a student at the Hawaii School for Girls at La Pietra, joined Orme at Allman’s house, where the two couples sipped champagne before going to the dance and then an after-party. “It was a really fun, happy time. We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling,” says Allman. “It was pretty typical from there out as far as what happens at prom: the dinner and the dancing and the photos.”
More: Obama’s Prom Photos
Let me set give some background here. I think that many are familiar with the sad history of the opposition to mixed-race relationships and marriages in the US. But as a refresher, all the States’ Anti-miscegenation laws were outlawed by the 1967 SCOTUS ruling in Loving vs Virginia. By the time of the SCOTUS ruling in 1967 the only states with these laws still on the books were mostly in the South.
The Supreme Court condemned Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law as “designed to maintain White supremacy”.
In 1967, 17 Southern states (all the former slave states plus Oklahoma) still enforced laws prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites. Maryland repealed its law in response to the start of the proceedings at the Supreme Court.
Then there was the continuing history of this kind of racism.
After the ruling of the Supreme Court, the remaining laws were no longer in effect. Nonetheless, it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially amend their states’ constitutions to remove language prohibiting miscegenation. In the respective referendums, 62% of voters in South Carolina and 59% of voters in Alabama voted to remove these laws.[26]
In 2009, Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Robert, Louisiana, refused to officiate a civil wedding for an interracial couple. A nearby justice of the peace, on Bardwell’s referral, officiated the wedding; the interracial couple sued Keith Bardwell and his wife Beth Bardwell in federal court.[27]
Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States - wiki
And I have a personal antidote to add. I once worked for one of the largest US Corporations headquartered in a city in the South. We hired a very talented woman who was residing in California but would relocate to the headquarters in order to join our team. About 6 months after joining the team it was announced that she would leave the team, still be apart of the organization but that she would be moving to an office in Boston. Having quickly developed a personal connection with her I discreetly contacted her and asked why.
The problem turned out to be that she was Caucasian and that she was married to an African American and they were being constantly discriminated against both both overtly and covertly. They had trouble buying a home due to the fact that, at first, all the offers were withdrawn after they were made and their mixed race marriage was discovered. Then, after they learned to hide the fact until after it was too late to witdraw an offer they were singled out for harassment by the Condo associations. Other examples were that they were coincidently continuously moved to the back of the waiting lists at local restaurants so that they never got seats etc.
So with this said, I’d be interested to know if any of the readers and contributors at Little Green Footballs are aware of or can research and find any racist comments regarding the obvious fact that the high school prom date of the young Barack Obama in these photographs is obviously not of the same race as he. I myself will look on many of the most obvious Right-Wing online forums and will post any examples of this here in the comments. If you find any, please either do the same or make your own stand alone posts. I think that is may turn into a great exercise of “cultural anthropology”.