An Arrest For A Marriage Changes All Of The United States

Richard & Mildred-Loving in their Living Room by Grey Villet, LIFE, 1965

July 11, 1958, Early this morning in Central Point, Virginia Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks turned his flashlight on a couple in bed, waking them and he demanded from Richard Loving who the woman was in bed with him. The sheriff and two of his deputies were responding to an anonymous tip that a White man had the audacity to bed a Black woman.

Mildred Loving sat up in bed and told the sheriff, “I’m his wife.” The sheriff ignored her and continued to question her husband. Finally deciding that the couple was telling the truth, he arrested them for breaking Virginia’s miscegenation law, barring interracial marriage. They had married in Washington D.C. where interracial marriage was legal.

Booked into jail, Richard Loving received a bond and was released after one night. Mildred was treated as any Black person of the time might be and was denied bond, spending three nights in a cramped cell before being released into the custody of her father. This incident began a nine-year battle that ended at the Supreme Court and changed the nation.

When the Lovings appeared in January of 1959 and pleaded guilty, the judge sentenced them to a year in jail but offered the compromise that if they left Virginia for 5 years, he would commute the sentence. They agreed.

For the Lovings, this was a particularly hard decision as they had lived in Caroline County for more than a decade. Their families had spent time together when they were adolescents. Still, they returned to Washington D.C. rather than face prison time. That did not mean they chose to surrender. They took precautions and frequently returned to see family. Although this often meant traveling separately and remaining inside when in Virginia.

Growing tired of these problems and wanting to get out of the city Mildred took a chance in 1964 and wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Kennedy did not feel there was a legal way for him to intercede on the Lovings's behalf but did refer them to the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU lawyers Philip J. Hirschkop and Bernard S. Cohen enthusiastically agreed to help the Lovings obtain their rights.

The first appeal of the conviction at Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals in Richmond was presented on February 11, 1965, and denied on March 7, 1966. So, they appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the Court unanimously ruled that Virginia's miscegenation law was unconstitutional, effectively erasing all miscegenation laws in the 16 states that had them on the books.

Freed of the racist law and conviction the Lovings returned to Caroline County to raise their three children. Richard was killed when their car was hit by a drunk driver in 1975, in the same accident Mildred lost her right eye. She though continued to live in Caroline County until she died in 2008.

The triumph at the Supreme Court is now celebrated on June 12 as “Loving Day” where communities celebrate the verdict and their rights and multiculturalism. In  2016, the award-winning film “Loving” was released starring Ruth Negga as Mildred and Joel Edgerton as Richard.

Sources:

https://co.caroline.va.us/308/The-Lovings#:~:text=They%20returned%20to%20Caroline%20County,the%20state's%20anti%2Dmiscegenation%20law.

https://www.history.com/news/mildred-and-richard-the-love-story-that-changed-america