Gottfried de Purucker was an author and
theosophist who, when asked about
intermarriage in 1930, said: The word
miscegenation was used in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet printed in
New York City in late 1863, entitled
Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. The pamphlet purported to be in favor of
interbreeding of whites and
blacks until the races were indistinguishably mixed as
mulattos, claiming that this was the goal of the
United States Republican Party. The real authors were
David Goodman Croly, managing editor of the
New York World, a
Democratic Party paper, and
George Wakeman, a
World reporter. The pamphlet soon was exposed as an attempt to discredit the Republicans, the
Lincoln administration, and the
abolitionist movement by exploiting the fears and racial biases common among whites. Nonetheless, this pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the
American Civil War by opponents of Republicans. The
Province of Maryland passed the first
anti-miscegenation law in colonial America in 1664. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed
anti-miscegenation laws, often based on controversial interpretations of the
Bible, particularly the story of
Phinehas. Typically a
felony, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies. Sometimes the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of
adultery or
fornication would be brought against them instead. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the federal District of Columbia did not pass anti-miscegenation laws. In 1883, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court in
Pace v. Alabama. In 1948, the
California Supreme Court in
Perez v. Sharp effectively repealed the California anti-miscegenation statutes, thereby making California the first state in the twentieth century to do so. In 1967, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in
Loving v. Virginia. ==Theosophy==