Abolitionist, author, and women’s rights advocate Lydia Maria Child argued for the proper to interracial marriage in principle, not in practice as she maintained “no abolitionist considers such a thing desirable” (third from left). Orator and abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond thought-about the legality of interracial marriage the epitome of rights essential for a free and open society and fought for the repeal of Massachusetts’s ban in 1843 (right). The first laws proscribing interracial relationships, however, didn’t pertain to Native-English unions but to ones colonial leaders feared would upend the social order because they might promote alliances between indentured servants and slaves. The case that brought down interracial marriage bans in…