RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies

Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies

By DIONNE WALKER – 15 hours ago

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers."

She became pregnant a few years later, she and Loving got married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Mildred told the AP she didn't realize it was illegal.

"I think my husband knew," Mildred said. "I think he thought (if) we were married, they couldn't bother us."

But they were arrested a few weeks after they returned to Central Point, their hometown in rural Caroline County north of Richmond. They pleaded guilty to charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.

They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave Virginia — the only home they'd known — for 25 years. They moved to Washington for several years, then launched a legal challenge by writing to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Attorneys later said the case came at the perfect time — just as lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act, and as across the South, blacks were defying Jim Crow's hold.

"The law that threatened the Lovings with a year in jail was a vestige of a hateful, discriminatory past that could not stand in the face of the Lovings' quiet dignity," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the ACLU.

"We loved each other and got married," she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. "We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants."

After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia, where they lived with their children, Donald, Peggy and Sidney. Each June 12, the anniversary of the ruling, Loving Day events around the country mark the advances of mixed-race couples.

Richard Loving died in a car accident that also injured his wife. "They said I had to leave the state once, and I left with my wife," he told the Star in 1965. "If necessary, I will leave Virginia again with my wife, but I am not going to divorce her."

Maybe one day we'll be at the point in this country where intermarriage makes race irrelevent.

After all, some here can't for the life of them understand why Rev. Wright is so pissed off at white people. As if no one ever denied Rev. Wright a seat at the counter, as if he never had to drink from a separate fountain, as if he never had to sit in the back of the bus, as if he never had to endure racial epithets and was unable to openly reciprocate, as if he never had to live under laws that told him who he could date and marry and who he could not. If I were some of you, I'd be eternally grateful that black people didn't join en masse and start taking revenge on the lot of you.

Seeing as how the general mindset of most people here seems to be one of not rocking the boat and going by societal norms, I'd say they'd be angrily against Rosa Parks and the Loving's if it was 40 years ago.

"Why won't she sit in the back of the bus". to quote a funny cartoon from "Bowling For Columbine"

After all, some here can't for the life of them understand why Rev. Wright is so pissed off at white people. As if no one ever denied Rev. Wright a seat at the counter, as if he never had to drink from a separate fountain, as if he never had to sit in the back of the bus, as if he never had to endure racial epithets and was unable to openly reciprocate, as if he never had to live under laws that told him who he could date and marry and who he could not. If I were some of you, I'd be eternally grateful that black people didn't join en masse and start taking revenge on the lot of you.

Seeing as how the general mindset of most people here seems to be one of not rocking the boat and going by societal norms, I'd say they'd be angrily against Rosa Parks and the Loving's if it was 40 years ago.

So your saying if a racist white person denied Wright a seat at the counter you can understand why Wright is mad at all white people?

You'd be grateful that black people didn't take revenge on the lot of you? When did I ever do anything against a black person? Why would they take revenge on me? I can't really understand you. It seems you are saying that black people were treated unfairly because of their skin, but you think that because some white person did bad things that everyone with the same skin is lucky they weren't killed.

I do feel pity for you for your hatred whomod. There are white racists for sure, but the majority of white people aren't. As long as you continue to lash out at people based on their color, you are no better than the people that put Rosa Parks in the back of the bus for her color. You are a disgusting human being, but you have to live with yourself.

Continue to spew your hatred on the internet, I'm sure no one wants to hear it in the real world.

What I love best: wasting space on the politics forum

Not as long as "interracial" people like Alicia Keys, Halle Berry and Barack Hussein Obama continue to call themselves "black" or "African American," deny their white parentage (or call their white grandmothers racist) and view the world through a racial prism.

Are you willing to allow your daughters to marry and have children with a minority in order to take one step closer to thios utopian society?

i think that there is an over self conscientiousness by some people that america in general gives a crap what color your skin is...

my grandma was 1/2 shawneee indian, my nephew is half mexican, i dont define them by race,my family doesnt define them by race, we dont define ourselves by race. i think that there is an over self conscientiousness by some people that america in general gives a crap what color your skin is...

Um, my wife is a Hispanic, Asian, Carribbean, Dutch, Jew.

In other words, she-and my kids-are mixed race. Picture skin and hair color somewhere in the general skin tone and hair color of Jessica Alba (circa "Dark Angel" and pre-FF dye jobs).

In fact, given my wife's Carribean heritage, there's a good chance she's at least part black.

And I'm part Mohawk Indian. Though I inherited by Irish and Polish grandparents pasty white skin.

So why would I give a fuck if one of the kids marries a black person? Because I'm...Republican?

NOW who's stereotyping?