The 2008 holiday season is upon us. Three days worth commemorating are coming up in a four day span, even though the calendar says that it’s June, not December. Many people know that June 14th is Flag Day, an annual observance which marks the anniversary of the adoption of the flag of the United States by a resolution of the second Continental Congress in 1777. Even more will celebrate Father’s Day on June 15th. It’s unusual to have the opportunity to hold two separate observances on the same weekend, but many families will do just that this year.
Fewer people are aware of a holiday that takes place annually on June 12th, and that’s too bad. Loving Day is truly worth celebrating, but not for the reason that some people who are hearing about it for the first time might think.
On June 2, 1958 childhood sweethearts Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter drove 90 miles north to Washington, DC to get married. The couple had gotten the name of a minister in the nation’s capital from the phone book. Mildred’s father and one of her brothers served at witnesses at the ceremony, and once it was over the two returned to their hometown of Central Point, Virginia.
Five weeks later the couple was in bed in the room they occupied at Mildred’s parents’ home when at two o’clock in the morning Caroline County sheriff R. Garnett Brooks and two of his deputies burst into their bedroom, leveled flashlights at the couple, and demanded of Richard, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”
Mildred replied, “He’s my husband.” The sheriff responded by telling the couple that their District of Columbia marriage certificate wasn’t recognized by the state of Virginia, and arrested them. They were jailed and subsequently charged with unlawful cohabitation.
The reason for the couple’s legal difficulties? Loving, a 23 year old construction worker, was white. His bride was of Native American and African-American heritage. At the time one-third of the 48 United States had laws on the books prohibiting interracial marriage, and Virginia was one of them.
The Lovings eventually pleaded guilty to violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act and were sentenced to a year in prison, which would be suspended if they agreed to leave their home state and not return together for the next 25 years. Presiding judge Leon Bazile stated in his decision that, “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.” The couple subsequently moved to Washington DC to avoid jail time, but were unhappy living away from their families, and from the rural setting in which both had grown up. They would travel separately to visit friends and family in Central Point but were justifiably unhappy with their situation, so in 1964 Mildred wrote to United States attorney general Robert Kennedy asking if the just-passed Civil Rights Act would help them. Kennedy responded that it would not, but the justice department referred the Lovings to the American Civil Liberties Union. A young ACLU lawyer named Bernard Cohen agreed to represent them, free of charge. Later another ACLU attorney, Philip J. Hirschkop, joined Cohen on the couple’s legal team.
The case of Loving vs. Virginia bounced between several federal and state courts for three years before the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the original judge’s decision that reaffirmed the legality of the state’s miscegenation laws. The Lovings and their attorneys then turned to the United States Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their final appeal. On June 12, 1967 the court unanimously decided in their favor, and by doing so effectively struck down the last group of segregation laws remaining on the books, which were those requiring separation of races in marriage. The couple neither sought nor claimed to be reformers; Richard and Mildred both simply wanted to be able to legally marry the person with whom each was in love.
It would be nice to say that the Lovings lived happily ever after, but their story is bittersweet. In 1975 their car was broadsided by a drunk driver who had run a stop sign. Richard was killed in accident, and Mildred’s injuries included the loss of her right eye. Mildred Loving lived quietly in her hometown until she died of pneumonia last month at age 68. She succumbed on May 2nd, precisely one month before what would have been the 50th anniversary of her marriage to the man about whom, in a rare interview, she said, “He was my support, he was my rock.”
Mrs. Loving later stopped giving interviews altogether, but in a statement she issued on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, she urged that lesbians and gay men be allowed to marry.
Neither Richard nor Mildred Loving ever believed that they were remarkable people, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t think so.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
Font size: