These questions are taken up in four papers that discuss love, sex, and marriage in colonial projects, on the battlegrounds of the black freedom and feminist movements, and even in the U.S. military. William Kuby examines “Tom Thumb Weddings,” or simulated marriage ceremonies performed by juveniles in the early twentieth century. These “weddings” encouraged early enthusiasm for marriage and procreation, particularly among white middle-class children who, in the eyes of eugenicists, held the potential to halt the nation’s descent into “race suicide” if given the proper training. Emily Swafford will discuss the U.S. military’s regulation of marriage—and by extension, love and sex—in the early Cold War era. She reveals that, while the military had long regulated sex and marriage, mostly by discouraging marriage and providing outlets for male, heterosexual sex, the armed forces began encouraging marriage and family after the Second World War. Traci Parker examines African American women’s romances in the 1950s and 1960s. She argues that, because gender, sexuality, and Jim Crow were intricately intertwined in deeply pathological ways, romantic relationships were sites where racism and gender inequalities were confronted in the Civil Rights Movement. Sarah Rowley concludes this panel. In her presentation, Rowley investigates how the election of married women to the U.S. Congress in the 1970s incited public debates on the state of marriage. These congresswomen ran on independent, professional records and sparked discourse concerning gender roles, family, the breadwinner economic model, and masculinity in crisis. Together, these papers interrogate the intersections between the private and public realms to consider how personal romantic relationships have been bound up with larger questions of social and political power.