Obituaries
Mildred Loving
The woman who helped legalize interracial marriage
Mildred Loving
1939–2008
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
At 2 a.m. on July 11, 1958, three policemen burst into the bedroom of Mildred and Richard Loving in Central Point, Va. One of them demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?” Mildred Loving said, “I’m his wife.” Her husband, a bricklayer, pointed to their marriage certificate on the wall. “That’s no good here,” came the reply. Because Richard was white, and Mildred was part black and part Native American, their union was illegal in Virginia. They challenged the law as unconstitutional, though, and nine years later, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.
The Lovings hadn’t intended to make headlines, said the Los Angeles Times. They had been married in Washington, D.C., five weeks before they were arrested, after Mildred discovered she was pregnant. “We were just happy to be together,” she said. The judge was unsympathetic, though he promised not to imprison them if they left Virginia for 25 years. “The Lovings spent several unhappy years in a cramped apartment in Washington.” In 1964, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, “asking if the just-passed Civil Rights Act would help them return home.”
In a personal reply, Kennedy said no, but he urged the couple to challenge the Virginia law, said the Richmond, Va., Times Dispatch. The American Civil Liberties Union agreed to represent the Lovings, who “watched their case move through the legal strata of the Virginia court system, earning one defeat after another.” But on June 12, 1967, in a unanimous decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared, “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state.” The Lovings experienced a brief flurry of publicity: “Somebody burned a cross on their lawn. Life magazine visited and published a four-page photo spread. But the spotlight soon faded.”
Richard Loving was killed in an auto accident in 1975 and Mildred continued to live in their small, white cinderblock home, a mile and a half from where she’d been arrested. She rarely gave interviews and never considered herself a racial pioneer. “It was thrown in my lap,” she said of her ordeal. “What choice did I have?”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - April 17, 2024
Cartoons Wednesday's cartoons - political anxiety, jury sorting hat, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Arid Gulf states hit with year's worth of rain
Speed Read The historic flooding in Dubai is tied to climate change
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
USC under fire for canceling valedictorian speech
Speed Read Citing safety concerns, the university canceled a pro-Palestinian student's speech
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
Why Everyone's Talking About Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
Why Everyone's Talking About The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published
-
Martin Amis: literary wunderkind who ‘blazed like a rocket’
feature Famed author, essayist and screenwriter died this week aged 73
By The Week Staff Published
-
Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk legend, is dead at 84
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Barry Humphries obituary: cerebral satirist who created Dame Edna Everage
feature Actor and comedian was best known as the monstrous Melbourne housewife and Sir Les Patterson
By The Week Staff Published
-
Mary Quant obituary: pioneering designer who created the 1960s look
feature One of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century remembered as the mother of the miniskirt
By The Week Staff Published