A cold hand from the Civil War era
The work of the 1864 Arizona legislature:
The legislature provided that “[n]o black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian, or Asiatic, shall be permitted to [testify in court] against any white person,” thus making it impossible for them to protect their property, their families, or themselves from their white neighbors. It declared that “all marriages between a white person and a [Black person], shall…be absolutely void.” And it defined the age of consent for sexual intercourse to be just ten years old (even if a younger child had “consented”). So, in 1864, a legislature of 27 white men created a body of laws that discriminated against Black people and people of color and considered girls as young as ten able to consent to sex, and they adopted a body of criminal laws written by one single man." And in 2024, one of those laws is back in force in Arizona.
- Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American
