Cedric Dover. | Credit: Yale University Library Archives.
In 1948, a case came up for hearing in the California supreme court that challenged one of the very bases of racial segregation. The case was of Andrea Perez, a Mexican American woman. Perez, who was legally considered white because of her Spanish heritage, had been denied the right to marry Sylvester Davis, an African American, because of California’s anti-miscegenation law. An indignant Perez petitioned the supreme court, demanding a marriage licence. The court agreed. It struck down the miscegenation law as unconstitutional by a verdict of four to three. Justice Jesse Carter, one of the judges in the majority, wrote a 3,565-word judgement explaining the decision, in which he chose to cite a book written by Cedric Dover, an Anglo-Indian born nearly 8,000 miles away in Calcutta.