Loving: The Real Story

“Loving,” opening across the country this week, is about the couple whose marriage became the Supreme Court case “Loving v. Virginia.” It is shocking today to think that it was not until 1967 that laws prohibiting marriage between people of different races were found unconstitutional. Today, there is a Supreme Court justice who is himself married to a woman of a different race.

Richard and Mildred Loving lived in a small Virginia community where the races mixed freely. Richard Loving was white and his father worked for a black man. Mildred herself was of mixed race, part black, part Native American, and probably part white as well. Virginia, which shut down the state’s school system for two years rather than follow the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and integrate the schools, was one of sixteen states to prohibit interracial marriage. The Virginia judge who upheld the law wrote:

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 judge relied on an earlier court decision upholding miscegenation laws “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood,” “a mongrel breed of citizens,” and “the obliteration of racial pride.”

The Lovings were married in the District of Columbia, which permitted interracial marriage, and then they returned to their home. Police broke in while they were asleep and arrested them.

They were banned from the state. The judge told them that if they returned, they would be arrested. So, they moved to Washington D.C. and raised their three children. But they wanted very much to return to their rural community.

Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy to ask for help, and his office referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union. Two young lawyers took the case. Ten years after they were arrested, their marriage made it possible for interracial couples — including President Obama’s parents — to be legally married.

The unanimous decision was stated in the strongest terms:

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 discriminations. 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.

Later the Loving v. Virginia decision would be a significant precedent for the Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, making it possible for same-sex couples to be legally married.

The “Loving” movie, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. It is very much their story, with most of the legal issues and court appearances taking place off screen.

There is a superb documentary called The Loving Story. And TIME Magazine has a portfolio of the LIFE Magazine photos of the couple taken by the photographer played by Michael Shannon in the film.

When the lawyer asked Richard Loving what his message was for the Supreme Court, he said one sentence that was more powerful and eloquent than all the legal arguments: “Tell the judge I love my wife.”