Anti-miscegenation laws or
miscegenation laws were laws that enforced
racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by
criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different
races. Such laws were first introduced in North America from the late seventeenth century onwards by several of the
Thirteen Colonies, and subsequently by many
US states and
US territories and remained in force in many US states until 1967. After the Second World War, an increasing number of states repealed their anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, in
Loving v. Virginia, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws were held to be unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of the United States. Similar laws were also enforced in
Nazi Germany as part of the
Nuremberg laws, and in
South Africa as part of the system of
Apartheid. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have been termed "
miscegenation" since the term was coined in 1863. Contemporary usage of the term is less frequent, except to refer to historical laws banning the practice.