Loving Loving
May 12, 2008
I remember driving down to rural Caroline County, Virginia, in 1992, to visit Mildred Loving. I was writing a piece for The Washington Post about the 25th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 landmark Supreme Court case that struck down barriers to interracial marriage, and I wanted to visit the woman whose name was at the top of the case docket.
Mildred Jeter, a woman of African American and Cherokee ancestry, and Richard Loving, her white husband, had been forbidden to marry in Virginia by the anti-miscegenation laws that were in effect there and in 16 other states in 1958. Most states had had anti-miscegenation laws at one time or another. They were a legacy of white supremacism, and a bar to interracial children inheriting a white man’s property when slave masters decided to rape their black female slaves.
The Lovings, however, did not fit this slavery-era view of interracial relationships. They were childhood friends, who grew up in the segregated South in an era when Dr. King and the civil rights movement were on the march. Brown v. Board of Education had recently been decided, and in some communities blacks and whites played together.
As with many couples, Mildred’s brother had been a friend of Richard, who had noticed his attractive younger sister. When Mildred and Richard began expecting a child in 1958, they went to D.C. where the laws for getting married were less restrictive.
As soon as they came back to Virginia, however, Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks woke them from their bed at 2 a.m. and took them to the county jail. In his view, the D.C. marriage certificate was not valid in Virginia, so they were guilty of unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Judge Leon M. Bazile of the Caroline County Circuit Court sentenced them to a year’s imprisonment. He suspended the punishment, however, on the condition they leave the state for the next 25 years.
In a statement that seems almost laughable now in a land with more than four million interracial couples, Judge Bazile said, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that: “There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. … There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Richard and Mildred returned to Caroline County and raised their three children. However, tragedy struck in 1975 when a drunk driver hit their car, killing Richard and severely injuring Mildred.
In speaking with Mildred Loving in her living room in 1992, as my boys played in her back yard with her family, it occurred to me that she was both extremely ordinary and not ordinary at all. Like Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu, two others whose names grace the docket of landmark Supreme Court decisions, she had the firm conviction that she had done nothing wrong. In her view, she was simply in love, and the law had simply caught up to the justice of her position.
Her life had been defined by a court case and publicity she had not wanted. But once the battle had been joined, she had done her part to help justice prevail.
Mrs. Loving died this week at age 68, leaving behind two children, eight grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. She also leaves behind a legacy of love and forgiveness that is sorely needed in an age where we continue to deny our gay friends and neighbors the right to marry, using arguments that are strikingly like those used against the Lovings.
Interracial marriage was a bitterly controversial issue in 1967, but no big deal today. As we thank Mildred and Richard for enduring the nine-year court battle leading to a decision that has enriched the lives of so many of us, I hope we also can recommit ourselves to bringing the Loving view of marriage to the protections sought by same-sex couples.
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THIS REALITY OF LIVE IS HEART RENDERINGLY TOUCHING AND SO TRUE OF THE COLORLESS SOCIETY THAT THIS WORLD MAY BECOME IN UTOPIA. THE RIGHT OF FREE CHOICE IS GOD’S GREATEST GIFT TO PEOPLE, WHO RULE THE ANIMAL WORLD WITH ONE DISTINCTION OF ‘CONSCIOUS’ DECISION AND COMMITMENT, THAT ANIMALS MATE ONLY WITH THEIR OWN KIND OUT OF INSTINCT AND SURVIVAL.
HUMANS IN UTOPIA WILL BE ABLE TO ACCEPT AND EMBRACE ALL LEVELS OF RELATIONSHIPS WITHOUT REGARD OF RACE, COLOR, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, ETC..PROTECTED BY OUR CONSTITUTION IN/FOR THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS WITH SINCERE COMMITMENT IN THEIR ‘FREE CHOICES’!!.
According to the article,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/06/BACI10H17V.DTL
Mildred Loving - challenged marriage ban
Dionne Walker, Associated Press
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard Loving began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”
In this day and age, this couple would be considered SEX OFFENDERS and Richard listed on the SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY, with community notification as a sexual predator, with residency banishment, zoning and tracking for life. All in the name of public safety and to save the children, you know?