The court held that Virginias anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Richard and Mildreds story, unfolding now on movie screens in Loving starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, plays out with a different voice in Villets black-and-white photos. They pled guilty and were convicted by the Caroline County Circuit Court on January 6, 1959. Mildred was attending an all-Black school when she first met Richard, a white high school student whom she initially perceived as arrogant. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Im sorry for you. June 10, 2016 10:00 AM EDT. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. Before the court, the Assistant Attorney General likened interracial marriage to incest. Richard and Mildred Loving are shown at their Central Point home with their children, Peggy, Donald and Sidney, in 1967. In 1964, after their youngest son was hit by a car in the busy streets, they decided they needed to move back to their home town, and they filed suit to vacate the judgment against them so they would be allowed to return home. I married the only man I ever loved, and Im happy for the time we had together. Heres what to know, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. I wasnt in anything concerning civil rights, Mildred explained in an interview. Prior to Richard's marriage to Mildred on June 2, 1958, the Loving surname, at least in Caroline County, was the exclusive property of its white residents. [3] On June 29, 1975, a drunk driver struck the Lovings' car in Caroline County, Virginia. When the Lovings were banished from Virginia as a part of their plea deal for violating the states anti-miscegenation statute, they returned to Washington, D. C., where they had gotten married, and resided with Mildreds cousin who lived in a thriving black community on the northeast side of town. Im his wife, Mildred replied. The case, Loving v. Virginia, was decided unanimously in the Lovings' favor on June 12, 1967. Theres an unofficial celebration on June 12, called Loving Day, honoring the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision and multiculturalism. Never ones for the spotlight, Mildred and Richard declined to attend the Supreme Court hearing. Richard and Mildred raised three children: Sidney, Donald and Peggy, the youngest two being Richard's biological children with Mildred. Mildred and Richard Loving. By 1963, the Lovings decided they'd had enough, with Mildred woefully unhappy over living in the city and completely fed up when her son was hit by a car. LOVE Mildred Loving holds a photo of her husband Richard at 17. Under the terms of their sentence, Richard and Mildred could not travel to Virginia together, but they were allowed to visit individually. The children that opponents of interracial marriage in the film label as "victims" and "martyrs" play happily. Mildred, however, was not allowed a bond. Peggy Rusk, daughter of President Lyndon Johnsons secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and Guy Smith on their wedding day at Stanford University Chapel in September 1967. A Maryland Dumping Site Was Actually A Black Cemetery. I was, well, we were trying to get back to Virginia. In this situation, Mildredlike many of her neighborsis the one who seems capable of passing into a white world. They were arrested at night by the county sheriff who had received an anonymous tip,[19] and charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth." When Richard gestured to the couple's marriage certificate hanging on the wall, the sheriff coldly stated the document held no power in their locale. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants. Mildred Loving, who was of African American and Native American descent, became a reluctant activist in the .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}civil rights movement of the 1960s when she and her white husband, Richard Loving, successfully challenged Virginia's ban on interracial marriage. There were policemen with flashlights in their. But then theres the photo of Richard and Mildred Loving sitting with their attorney. My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. She died from pneumonia in 2008. Loving v. Virginia overturned interracial marriage laws in 16 states. I know we have some enemies, but we have some friends too, so it really dont make any difference about my enemies. Neither of the Lovings appeared in court, but Richard did send a letter to his lawyers that read, Tell the Court I love my wife and it is just not fair that I cannot live with her in Virginia. The judges agreed. 'It was God's work. And with those words, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the Lovings original sentencing in 1966. Or because he was basically black? Mildred lost her right eye. Mildred, who was also in the car, lost sight in her right eye. In 1964, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for help. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. They were frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia, and by social isolation and financial difficulties in Washington, D.C. Richard was killed in the crash, at the age of 41. So angry violently angry. And while the Lovings were white and the Jeters were of Black and Native American descent, their friendship didnt raise any eyebrows in the integrated Caroline County, Virginia. As a 1966 LIFE Magazine article about the case, The Crime of Being Married, notes in a caption, their daughters features are pure white though their oldest sons are heavily Negroid. (And in fact, as I highlighted in the recent journal article Mildred Loving: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Woman, he was not Richards biological son, but Mildreds from a previous relationship.) Kennedy referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union, which agreed to take the case. "A few white and a few colored. Caroline County adhered to the state's strict 20th-century Jim Crow segregation laws, but Central Point had been a visible mixed-race community since the 19th century. I support the freedom to marry for all. When Mildred was 18 she became pregnant and Richard moved into the Jeter household. (Mildred already had a first child from another relationship.) I support the freedom to marry for all. ACLU lawyers Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop unsuccessfully aimed to have the case vacated and the original ruling reversed via the judge who oversaw the conviction. [7], Mildred Jeter was the daughter of Musial (Byrd) Jeter and Theoliver Jeter. They grew up in Central Point, a small town in Virginia that was Tragically, Richard was killed in an automobile accident in 1975, when his car was struck by another vehicle operated by a drunk driver. Thats what Loving, and loving, are all about. While the Lovings were too preoccupied with their own hardships to be involved, they were inspired by the activism they saw. When Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18, the couple decided to get married. And yet there has so often been an urge to go looking for a deeper explanation. When the sheriff demanded to know who Mildred was to Richard, she offered up the answer: "I'm his wife." Such moments are poignantly captured in several instances in the filmfor example, in a fictionalized encounter between Richard and the county sheriff. She later identified herself as Indian. Their decision wiped away the countrys last remaining segregation laws. Behind Loving stand her three children (from left to right), Sidney, Donald, and Peggy, who holds her son, Mark. Especially if it denies peoples civil rights.. He was also born and raised in Central Point, where he became a construction worker after school. This map shows when states ended such laws. "But she was Native American; both of her parents were Native American.". The couple eventually pleaded guilty to violating the Virginia law. Richard Loving would attest to the Supreme Court that the only thing they needed to know was that he loved his wife. LIFE photographer Grey Villet met the Lovings in 1965, before the landmark case went to trial, when he was sent on assignment to document the day-to-day world of the couple. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and black woman who had been jailed for being married to each other. Back in the 1880s, another interracial marriage case reached the Virginia Supreme Court, but it was upheld on the grounds that because the law punished both the white partner and the Black partner equally it did not violate the Constitutions equal protection clause. Richard Loving, a white man, and his wife Mildred, a black woman, challenged Virginia's ban on interracial marriage and ultimately won their case at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. Richard Loving died in an automobile accident in 1975 that left Mildred Loving blind in one eye. Richard and Mildred Loving settled in Washington, D.C., and soon, they became a family of five. So reluctant was Mrs. Loving to talk about her past that Mrs. Cosby, 36, says she learned the details of the story from movies about the case. Following the case Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law in 1967, also ending the remaining ban on interracial marriages in other states. Richard was of Irish and English descent, and Mildred of African American and Native American descent, and according to state law, it was crime for them to be married. What are you doing in bed with this woman? Brooks reportedly demanded, pointing his flashlight at the Lovings. The commonwealth argued that the Virginia law banning interracial marriage was a necessary means of protecting people from the sociological [and] psychological evils of marriage between races. 2016 | Maturity Rating: PG-13 | 2h 3m | Romantic Movies. Sidney passed away in May of 2010 due to reasons that are not publically known. 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