1998 South Carolina Amendment 4
November 3, 1998
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Shall Section 33, Article III of the Constitution of this State be amended by deleting the following sentence from the Constitution:
'The marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto, or person who shall have one-eighth or more of Negro blood, shall be unlawful and void'. | ||||||||||
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| Source: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections | ||||||||||
1998 South Carolina Amendment 4 was a proposed amendment to the Constitution of South Carolina to repeal the state's defunct constitutional ban on interracial marriage. The amendment was symbolic, as interracial marriage had already been legal nationwide since the United States Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which found all bans on such marriages to be in violation of two clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Placed on the ballot by Bill 4303, the ballot measure succeeded with just under 62% of the vote, and with all but six of the state's forty-six counties having a majority vote in favor. Supporters of the change included Governor David Beasley and State House Speaker Pro-Tempore Terry Haskins, while opposition was limited and prominently came from state representative John Graham Altman. Following approval by voters in November 1998, the state legislature ratified the change in February 1999.