Massachusetts 1913 Law - History and Text

History and Text

State Senator Harry Ney Stearns introduced Senate Bill 234 on March 7, 1913. The bill was signed into law three weeks later by Governor Eugene N. Foss. The statute provided that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

Section 11. No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void. Mass. Gen. L. ch. 207, § 11 (2005).

No record of the state Senate debate has been found. Legal experts have said that the original purpose of the legislation was an anti-miscegenation measure; although the law would not have banned interracial marriage (which had been legal in Massachusetts since 1843) it may have been intended to block interracial couples from states that banned interracial marriages from going to Massachusetts to get married. The law was enacted at the height of a public scandal over black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson's interracial marriages. However, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly said there is no evidence lawmakers were motivated by race.

The year prior to the adoption of the 1913 law, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives to provide that "Intermarriage between negros or persons of color and Caucasians ... within the United States ... is forever prohibited." The amendment failed to pass, but many state legislatures proposed new interracial marriage bans during this period. In 1910, 60 percent of states – 28 of the 46 – already had anti-miscegenation laws. By 1913, anti-miscegenation measures were introduced in half of the 18 states that did not already have a ban, although only Wyoming passed a new anti-miscegenation law during this period.