LeConte Hall is the largest academic building in the United States.  If you have never seen the T-Rex in the building’s rotunda, you should. It’s very impressive. In 2020, UC Berkeley decided to rename the building. A permanent name has not yet been chosen. Why is the building being renamed? John LeConte was an early president of the University of California, and his brother Joseph headed the university’s physics and natural history departments. The LeConte brothers grew up in Georgia on their father’s plantation, where the family owned over 200 slaves. During the Civil War, the LeConte brothers did important work for the Confederacy. After the war was over, the LeConte brothers found Reconstruction intolerable. When Joseph LeConte was told that he had to allow black students to attend his lectures at the University of South Carolina, he resigned his professorship. He moved to Berkeley, where his brother John was already running the university. Joseph LeConte taught his theories about white racial superiority at UC Berkeley until his death in 1901.

Theistic Evolutionism. Joseph LeConte believed in both evolution and creationism and tried to find a way to reconcile the 2 ideas. He believed that God created plants and animals and then allowed evolution to take place. LeConte rejected Darwin’s theory of natural selection, but he also did not believe in biblical miracles. His geology textbooks were widely used in high schools and colleges in the United States in the 1890s. These books introduced students to the theory of evolution before that theory became so controversial in the early 20th century that most school systems in the U.S. dropped geology from their curriculums. Some states made it a criminal offense to teach evolution in public schools.

MISCEGENATION.

I grew up in Maryland. Maryland was a slave state, but it didn’t join the Confederacy. Nevertheless, when I was a kid, Baltimore schools were still segregated, only white people were allowed to eat at lunch counters, and miscegenation was a felony crime. What is miscegenation? Miscegenation is the marriage of people of different races. In many states, people of different races who were cohabitating could also be charged with miscegenation. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

The reason I bring up miscegenation is that the Supreme Court has just overturned Roe vs. Wade on the grounds that there is nothing in the Constitution about abortion and therefore, it is a matter for state governments to decide for themselves. A lot of people have wondered if the Supreme Court will apply that same logic to state laws that ban gay marriage. There is nothing in the Constitution about marriage laws, and marriage laws vary greatly from state to state. 29 states have provisions in their state constitutions banning same-sex marriage, and 17 states have never repealed their miscegenation laws. So, could interracial marriage become illegal again? Would Justice Clarence Thomas vote to allow the return of miscegenation laws? Remember, his wife is white.

California.  A lot of people assume that miscegenation was just illegal in the South, but that isn’t true. Miscegenation was illegal in every state west of the Mississippi River except for Minnesota. In 1943, the all-white, all-male California state legislature voted unanimously to toughen up California’s miscegenation law. The 1943 California law stated that ‘no license may be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian, or member of the Malay race.’ Their definition of ‘Mongolian’ included Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. In 1945, the penalty in California for an interracial marriage was a fine of $10,000 and 10 years in prison. $10,000 was a lot of money in those days. In 1945, you could buy a house in San Francisco for $5,000. By comparison, the penalty in Mississippi in 1945 for miscegenation was only $100 and 1 year in prison.