1. Act to Prohibit the Intermarriage of Races, 1866

The Oregonian clipping featured here presented the language of a new Oregon law approved by the Legislature on October 24, 1866. It banned miscegenation—marriage between members of different racial groups. The second of its kind in Oregon’s history, the legislation joined similar passages in the nation’s law books, which had featured such laws since colonial times.

While an earlier Oregon law passed in 1862 banned marital unions between whites and persons with a quarter or more of “Negro blood,” the legislation featured here was more explicit with respect to who could not marry whom. It added Chinese and “Kanaka,” or native Hawai’ian, to the list of those who could not intermarry with whites.