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''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a
landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures or f ...
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the
Equal Protection The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
and
Due Process Clause In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except a ...
s of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and e ...
. The case involved
Mildred Loving Mildred Delores Loving (née Jeter; July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and her husband Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975) were an American married couple who were the plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case '' Lov ...
, a
woman of color The term "person of color" ( : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the U ...
, and her
white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...
husband
Richard Loving Mildred Delores Loving (née Jeter; July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and her husband Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975) were an American married couple who were the plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case '' Lov ...
, who in 1958 were sentenced to a year in prison for marrying each other. Their marriage violated
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "
colored ''Colored'' (or ''coloured'') is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow Era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur, though it has taken on a special meaning in Sout ...
". The Lovings appealed their conviction to the
Supreme Court of Virginia The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrativ ...
, which upheld it. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case. In June 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings' favor and overturned their convictions. Its decision struck down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and ended all race-based legal restrictions on
marriage in the United States Marriage in the United States is a legal, social, and religious institution. The marriage age in the United States is set by each state and territory, either by statute or the common law applies. An individual may marry in the United States as of ...
. Virginia had argued that its law was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because the punishment was the same regardless of the offender's race, and thus it "equally burdened" both whites and non-whites. The Court found that the law nonetheless violated the Equal Protection Clause because it was based solely on "distinctions drawn according to race" and outlawed conduct—namely, getting married—that was otherwise generally accepted and which citizens were free to do. Beginning in 2013, the decision was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on
same-sex marriage in the United States The availability of legally recognized same-sex marriage in the United States expanded from one state (Massachusetts) in 2004 to all fifty states in 2015 through various court rulings, state legislation, and direct popular votes. States each ...
unconstitutional, including in the Supreme Court decision '' Obergefell v. Hodges'' (2015).


Background


Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States

Anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-mi ...
had been in place in certain states since the colonial period. In the
Reconstruction Era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...
in 1865, the
Black Codes The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political p ...
across the seven states of the lower South made interracial marriage illegal. The new Republican legislatures in six states repealed the restrictive laws. By 1894, when the Democratic Party in the South returned to power, restrictions were reimposed. A major concern was how to draw the line between black and white in a society in which white men had many children with enslaved black women. On the one hand, a person's reputation as black or white was usually what mattered in practice. On the other hand, most laws used a " one drop of blood" rule, which meant that one black ancestor made a person black in the view of the law. In 1967, 16 states still retained anti-miscegenation laws, mainly in the
American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
.


Plaintiffs

Mildred Delores Loving was the daughter of Musial (Byrd) Jeter and Theoliver Jeter. She self-identified as
Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...
- Rappahannock, but was also reported as being of
Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...
, Portuguese, and
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
ancestry. During the trial, it seemed clear that she identified herself as black, especially as far as her own lawyer was concerned. However, upon her arrest, the police report identified her as "Indian". Richard Perry Loving was a white man, the son of Lola (Allen) Loving and Twillie Loving. Their families both lived in
Caroline County, Virginia Caroline County is a county (United States), United States county located in the eastern part of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia. The northern boundary of the county borders on the Rappahannock River, notably at the hist ...
, which adhered to strict Jim Crow segregation laws, but their town of Central Point had been a visible mixed-race community since the 19th century. The couple met in high school and fell in love. Mildred became pregnant, and in June 1958, the couple traveled to Washington, D.C. to marry, thereby evading Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime. A few weeks after they returned to Central Point, local police raided their home in the early morning hours of July 11, 1958, hoping to find them having sex, given that interracial sex was then also illegal in Virginia. When the officers found the Lovings sleeping in their bed, Mildred pointed out their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall. They were told the certificate was not valid in Virginia.


Criminal proceedings

The Lovings were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which classified
miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
as a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth". They were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years. After their conviction, the couple moved to the
District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle (Washington, D.C.), Logan Circle, Jefferson Memoria ...
.


Appellate proceedings

In 1963, frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia, as well as their social isolation and financial difficulties in Washington, Mildred Loving wrote in protest to
Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...
Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy referred her to the
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
(ACLU). The ACLU assigned volunteer cooperating attorneys Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, who filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings in Virginia's Caroline County Circuit Court, that requested the court to
vacate A vacated judgment (also known as vacatur relief) makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court, which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court. ...
the criminal judgments and set aside the Lovings' sentences on the grounds that the Virginia miscegenation statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment's
Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
. On October 28, 1964, after waiting almost a year for a response to their motion, the ACLU attorneys filed a federal
class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...
lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. This prompted the county court judge in the case, Leon M. Bazile (1890–1967), to issue a ruling on the long-pending motion to vacate. Echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, Bazile denied the motion with the words: On January 22, 1965, a three-judge district court panel postponed decision on the federal class-action case while the Lovings appealed Judge Bazile's decision on constitutional grounds to the
Virginia Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrativ ...
. On March 7, 1966, Justice Harry L. Carrico (later Chief Justice of the Court) wrote an opinion for the court upholding the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes. Carrico cited as authority the Virginia Supreme Court's decision in '' Naim v. Naim'' (1955) and ruled that criminalization of the Lovings' marriage was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, because both the white and the non-white spouse were punished equally for miscegenation, a line of reasoning that echoed that of the United States Supreme Court in 1883 in '' Pace v. Alabama''. However, the court did find the Lovings' sentences to be unconstitutionally vague, ordering that they be resentenced in the Caroline County Circuit Court. The Lovings, still supported by the ACLU, appealed the state supreme court's decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, where Virginia was represented by Robert McIlwaine of the state's attorney general's office. The Supreme Court agreed on December 12, 1966, to accept the case for final review. The Lovings did not attend the oral arguments in Washington, but one of their lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen, conveyed the personal message he had been given by Richard Loving: "Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia."


Precedents

Before ''Loving v. Virginia'', there had been several cases on the subject of interracial sexual relations. Within the state of Virginia, on October 3, 1878, in ''Kinney v. The Commonwealth'', the
Supreme Court of Virginia The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrativ ...
ruled that the marriage legalized in Washington, D.C. between Andrew Kinney, a black man, and Mahala Miller, a white woman, was "invalid" in Virginia. In the national case of '' Pace v. Alabama'' (1883), the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...
ruled that the conviction of an Alabama couple for interracial sex, affirmed on appeal by the Alabama Supreme Court, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Interracial marital sex was deemed a felony, whereas extramarital sex ("adultery or fornication") was only a misdemeanor. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the criminalization of interracial sex was not a violation of the
Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
because whites and non-whites were punished in equal measure for the offense of engaging in interracial sex. The court did not need to affirm the constitutionality of the ban on interracial marriage that was also part of Alabama's anti-miscegenation law, since the plaintiff, Mr. Pace, had chosen not to appeal that section of the law. After ''Pace v. Alabama'', the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws banning marriage and sex between whites and non-whites remained unchallenged until the 1920s. In ''Kirby v. Kirby'' (1921), Mr. Kirby asked the state of Arizona for an annulment of his marriage. He charged that his marriage was invalid because his wife was of "negro" descent, thus violating the state's anti-miscegenation law. The Arizona Supreme Court judged Mrs. Kirby's race by observing her physical characteristics and determined that she was of mixed race, therefore granting Mr. Kirby's annulment. In the ''Monks'' case (''Estate of Monks'', 4. Civ. 2835, Records of California Court of Appeals, Fourth district), the Superior Court of San Diego County in 1939 decided to invalidate the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Allan Monks because she was deemed to have "one eighth negro blood". The court case involved a legal challenge over the conflicting wills that had been left by the late Allan Monks; an old one in favor of a friend named Ida Lee, and a newer one in favor of his wife. Lee's lawyers charged that the marriage of the Monkses, which had taken place in Arizona, was invalid under Arizona state law because Marie Antoinette was "a Negro" and Alan had been white. Despite conflicting testimony by various expert witnesses, the judge defined Mrs. Monks' race by relying on the anatomical "expertise" of a surgeon. The judge ignored the arguments of an anthropologist and a biologist that it was impossible to tell a person's race from physical characteristics. Monks then challenged the Arizona anti-miscegenation law itself, taking her case to the California Court of Appeals, Fourth District. Monks' lawyers pointed out that the anti-miscegenation law effectively prohibited Monks as a mixed-race person from marrying anyone: "As such, she is prohibited from marrying a negro or any descendant of a negro, a Mongolian or an Indian, a Malay or a Hindu, or any descendants of any of them. Likewise ... as a descendant of a negro she is prohibited from marrying a Caucasian or a descendant of a Caucasian." The Arizona anti-miscegenation statute thus prohibited Monks from contracting a valid marriage in Arizona, and was therefore an unconstitutional constraint on her liberty. However, the court dismissed this argument as inapplicable, because the case presented involved not two mixed-race spouses but a mixed-race and a white spouse: "Under the facts presented the appellant does not have the benefit of assailing the validity of the statute." Dismissing Monks' appeal in 1942, the United States Supreme Court refused to reopen the issue. The turning point came with '' Perez v. Sharp'' (1948), also known as ''Perez v. Lippold''. In ''Perez'', the
Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the Supreme court, highest and final court of appeals in the judiciary of California, courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly h ...
recognized that bans on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.


Supreme Court decision

On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Lovings that overturned their criminal convictions and struck down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law. The Court's opinion was written by chief justice
Earl Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitutio ...
, and all the justices joined it. The Court first addressed whether Virginia's Racial Integrity Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment's
Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
, which reads: "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Virginia officials had argued that the Act did not violate the Equal Protection Clause because it "equally burdened" both whites and non-whites, since the punishment for violating the statute was the same regardless of the offender's race; for example, a white person who married a black person was subject to the same penalties as a black person who married a white person. The Court had accepted this "equal burden" argument 84 years earlier in its 1883 decision '' Pace v. Alabama''. But in ''Loving'', the Court rejected the argument. The Court said that because the Virginia Racial Integrity Act used racial classification as a basis for imposing criminal culpability, the Equal Protection Clause required the Court to strictly scrutinize the Act's provisions. Applying the
strict scrutiny In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate th ...
standard of review, the Court concluded that Virginia's Act had no discernible purpose other than "invidious racial discrimination" that was designed to "maintain White Supremacy". The Court therefore ruled that the Act violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Court ended its opinion with a short section holding that Virginia's Racial Integrity Act also violated the Fourteenth Amendment's
Due Process Clause In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except a ...
. The Court said that the freedom to marry is a fundamental constitutional right, and it held that depriving Americans of it on an arbitrary basis such as race was unconstitutional.


Effects


For interracial marriage

Despite the Supreme Court's decision, anti-miscegenation laws remained on the books in several states, although the decision had made them unenforceable. State judges in
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...
continued to enforce its anti-miscegenation statute until 1970, when the Nixon administration obtained a ruling from a U.S. District Court in ''United States v. Brittain''. In 2000, Alabama became the last state to adapt its laws to the Supreme Court's decision, when 60% of voters endorsed a constitutional amendment, Amendment 2, that removed anti-miscegenation language from the state constitution. After ''Loving v. Virginia'', the number of interracial marriages continued to increase across the United States and in the South. In Georgia, for instance, the number of interracial marriages increased from 21 in 1967 to 115 in 1970. At the national level, 0.4% of marriages were interracial in 1960, 2.0% in 1980, 12% in 2013, and 16% in 2015, almost 50 years after ''Loving''.


For same-sex marriage

''Loving v. Virginia'' was discussed in the context of the public debate about
same-sex marriage in the United States The availability of legally recognized same-sex marriage in the United States expanded from one state (Massachusetts) in 2004 to all fifty states in 2015 through various court rulings, state legislation, and direct popular votes. States each ...
. In '' Hernandez v. Robles'' (2006), the majority opinion of the
New York Court of Appeals The New York Court of Appeals is the highest court in the Unified Court System of the State of New York. The Court of Appeals consists of seven judges: the Chief Judge and six Associate Judges who are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by ...
—that state's highest court—declined to rely on the ''Loving'' case when deciding whether a right to same-sex marriage existed, holding that "the historical background of ''Loving'' is different from the history underlying this case." In the 2010 federal district court decision in '' Perry v. Schwarzenegger'', overturning California's Proposition 8 which restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples, Judge
Vaughn R. Walker Vaughn Richard Walker (born 1944) is an American lawyer who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011. Walker presided over the original trial in ''Holli ...
cited ''Loving v. Virginia'' to conclude that "the onstitutionalright to marry protects an individual's choice of marital partner regardless of gender". On narrower grounds, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. In June 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in ''Loving'', Mildred Loving issued the following statement: Up until 2014, five U.S. Courts of Appeals considered the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. In doing so they interpreted or used the ''Loving'' ruling differently: *The Fourth and Tenth Circuits used ''Loving'' along with other cases like '' Zablocki v. Redhail'' and ''
Turner v. Safley ''Turner v. Safley'', 482 U.S. 78 (1987), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the constitutionality of two Missouri prison regulations. One of the prisoners' claims related to the fundamental right to marry, and the other related to freed ...
'' to demonstrate that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized a "fundamental right to marry" that a state cannot restrict unless it meets the court's " heightened scrutiny" standard. Using that standard, both courts struck down state bans on same-sex marriage. *Two other courts of appeals, the Seventh and
Ninth In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second. Like the second, the interval of a ninth is classified as a dissonance in common practice tonality. Since a ninth is an octave larger than a second, its ...
Circuits, struck down state bans on the basis of a different line of argument. Instead of "fundamental rights" analysis, they reviewed bans on same-sex marriage as discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The former cited ''Loving'' to demonstrate that the Supreme Court did not accept tradition as a justification for limiting access to marriage. The latter cited ''Loving'' as quoted in ''
United States v. Windsor ''United States v. Windsor'', 570 U.S. 744 (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case concerning same-sex marriage. The Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition o ...
'' on the question of federalism: "state laws defining or regulating marriage, of course, must respect the constitutional rights of persons". *The only Court of Appeals to uphold state bans on same-sex marriage, the Sixth Circuit, said that when the ''Loving'' decision discussed marriage it was referring only to marriage between persons of the opposite sex. In '' Obergefell v. Hodges'' (2015), the Supreme Court invoked ''Loving'', among other cases, as precedent for its holding that states are required to allow same-sex marriages under both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. The court's decision in ''Obergefell'' cited ''Loving'' nearly a dozen times, and was based on the same principles – equality and an unenumerated right to marriage. During oral argument, the eventual author of the majority opinion, Justice
Anthony Kennedy Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by Presid ...
, noted that the ruling holding racial segregation unconstitutional and the ruling holding bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional ('' Brown v. Board of Education'' in 1954 and ''Loving v. Virginia'' in 1967, respectively) were made about 13 years apart, much like the ruling holding bans on same-sex sexual activity unconstitutional and the eventual ruling holding bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional (''
Lawrence v. Texas ''Lawrence v. Texas'', 539 U.S. 558 (2003), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that most sanctions of criminal punishment for consensual, adult non- procreative sexual activity (commonly referred to as sod ...
'' in 2003 and ''Obergefell v. Hodges'' in 2015, respectively).


In popular culture

In the United States, June 12, the date of the decision, has become known as
Loving Day Loving Day is an annual national celebration held on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision '' Loving v. Virginia'' which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. In the United ...
, an annual unofficial celebration of interracial marriages. In 2014, Mildred Loving was honored as one of the
Library of Virginia The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and ...
's " Virginia Women in History". In 2017, the
Virginia Department of Historic Resources The Virginia Department of Historic Resources is the State Historic Preservation Office for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The agency maintains the Virginia Landmarks Register (the first step for properties and districts in Virginia seeking list ...
dedicated a state
historical marker A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, typically attached to a wall, stone, or other ...
, which tells the story of the Lovings, outside the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond – the former site of the
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrati ...
. The story of the Lovings became the basis of several films: * The first, '' Mr. and Mrs. Loving'' (1996), was written and directed by Richard Friedenberg and starred Lela Rochon,
Timothy Hutton Timothy Tarquin Hutton (born August 16, 1960) is an American actor and film director. He is the youngest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at age 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in ''Ordinary People ...
, and
Ruby Dee Ruby Dee (October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. She originated the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of '' A Raisin in the Sun'' (1 ...
. According to Mildred Loving, "not much of it was very true. The only part of it right was I had three children." * Nancy Buirski's documentary ''The Loving Story,'' premiered on HBO in February 2012 and won a
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
that year. * ''
Loving Loving may refer to: * Love, a range of human emotions * Loving (surname) * ''Loving v. Virginia'', a 1967 landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case Film and television * Loving (1970 film), ''Loving'' (1970 film), an American fi ...
'', a dramatized telling of the story based on Buirski's documentary, was released in 2016. It was directed by
Jeff Nichols Jeff Nichols (born December 7, 1978) is an American film director and screenwriter from Little Rock, Arkansas. He studied filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Nichols is most known for his films '' Take Shelter'' (2 ...
and starred Ruth Negga and
Joel Edgerton Joel Edgerton (born 23 June 1974) is an Australian actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his appearance in the ''Star Wars'' films ''Attack of the Clones'' (2002) and ''Revenge of the Sith'' (2005) as a young Owen Lars, a role he reprised i ...
as the Lovings. Negga received an
Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nomination for her performance. * A four-part film, ''The Loving Generation'', premiered on Topic.com in February 2018. Directed and produced by Lacey Schwartz Delgado and Mehret Mandefro, it explores the lives of biracial children born after the ''Loving'' decision. In music,
Nanci Griffith Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She appeared many times on the PBS music program ''Austin City Limits'' starting in 1985 (season 10). In 1994 she won a Grammy Award f ...
's 2009 album '' The Loving Kind'' is named for the Lovings and includes a song about them. Satirist Roy Zimmerman's 2009 song "The Summer of Loving" is about the Lovings and their 1967 case. The title is a reference to the
Summer of Love The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury ...
. A 2015 novel by the French journalist Gilles Biassette, ''L'amour des Loving'' ("The Love of the Lovings", ), recounts the life of the Lovings and their case. A
photo-essay A photographic essay or photo-essay for short is a form of visual storytelling, a way to present a narrative through a series of images. A photo essay delivers a story using a series of photographs and brings the viewer along a narrative journey. E ...
about the couple by Grey Villet, created just before the case, was republished in 2017.


References


Footnotes


Citations


Bibliography

* *


Further reading

* * * * *Christopher Leslie (2004)
Justice Alito's Dissent in Loving v. Virginia
', University of California, p. 1564. * * *Dorothy Robert (2014)
Loving v. Virginia as a civil rights decision
'', p. 177. * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Links with the text of the court's decision

* *


Other external links


A Groundbreaking Interracial Marriage; ''Loving v. Virginia'' at 40.
''
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show '' Good Morning America'', '' ...
'' interview with Mildred Jeter Loving & video of original 1967 broadcast. June 14, 2007.
Resources
at
Oyez.org The Oyez Project at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law is an unofficial online multimedia archive of the Supreme Court of the United States, especially audio of oral arguments. The website "aims to be a complete an ...
including complete audio of the oral arguments.
''Loving'' Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions
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: ''
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'', June 11, 2007.
The Fortieth Anniversary of ''Loving v. Virginia'': The Legal Legacy of the Case that Ended Legal Prohibitions on Interracial Marriage
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commentary by Joanna Grossman. *Chin, Gabriel and Hrishi Karthikeyan, (2002) ''Asian Law Journal'', vol.
"Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910–1950"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loving v. Virginia 1967 in Virginia 1967 in United States case law 20th-century American trials Civil rights movement case law African-American history of Virginia American Civil Liberties Union litigation Caroline County, Virginia Legal history of Virginia Native American history Race and law in the United States United States equal protection case law United States family case law United States substantive due process case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court Rappahannock people United States Supreme Court decisions that overrule a prior Supreme Court decision Interracial marriage in the United States June 1967 events in the United States Marriage law in the United States United States racial discrimination case law Mildred and Richard Loving United States Supreme Court cases