by Melissa S. Green

On this date 45 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia, a landmark case which declared Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 unconstitutional,  and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the U.S.

The case involved Mildred Jeter,of African American and Native American descent, and Richard Loving, a white man, who married in June 1958 in Washington, DC, and were arrested in the middle of the night by the county sheriff acting on an anonymous tip after their return home in Central Point, Virginia.  They were charged criminally under Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law with “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”  The judge in the case declared at trial,

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 Lovings received sentences of one year imprisonment, suspended for 25 years on condition they leave the state. They moved to Washington, DC, and in November 1963, the American Civil Liberties Union filed on their behalf a motion in the state trial court to vacate their conviction and set aside the conviction— the first in a long series of lawsuits that ultimately led to the overturning of  laws against mixed-marriage nationwide. The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court stated in its 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Though unenforceable, laws against interracial marriage nevertheless remained on the books in various states until 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law.

On June 12, 2007, Mildred Loving issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision. Her statement concluded:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. 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. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Happy Loving Day!

Today is a good day to remember Mildred and Richard Loving and the freedom to marry they won for people of different races who love one another.

May we one day also — and soon — celebrate our own freedom to marry.

Watch a report on the Loving v. Virginia case: