A century after the tip of the Civil Struggle, greater than a dozen states nonetheless had legal guidelines on the books banning interracial marriage. Enter Mildred and Richard Loving, a Virginia couple whose June 12, 1967, Supreme Court docket ruling dealt a serious blow to miscegenation legal guidelines.
The couple married in 1958 in Washington — the place interracial marriage was authorized — then moved to their dwelling in Central Level, Virginia. Weeks later, the native sheriff got here into their dwelling in the course of the evening and so they had been charged with violating a number of Virginia codes, together with one which made it “illegal for any white individual within the state to marry any save a white individual.”
It was additionally unlawful for folks to depart the state for the aim of avoiding miscegenation legal guidelines, and such marriages had been thought-about “completely void” within the state of Virginia.
Mildred was a black lady, however her New York Occasions obituary says that she most well-liked to think about herself as Indian, since her mother and father had been each half Native American. Virginia had completely different types of miscegenation legal guidelines on the books stretching again to the 1600s, and the state’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act outlined anybody who wasn’t totally white as “coloured” — the one exception was made for many who had been 1/16 Native American, however even that had restrictions.
Mr. and Mrs. Loving pleaded responsible and had been sentenced to both a 12 months in jail or a 25-year banishment from the state. They selected the latter, moved to Washington and had three youngsters. In 1967, they had been arrested whereas visiting Virginia. Mildred wrote to the US lawyer basic — a person by the identify of Robert Kennedy — for assist, and he referred her to the ACLU.
The case’s path to the Supreme Court docket was an attention-grabbing one, nevertheless, for the reason that couple had mentioned they had been responsible and had no proper to an attraction. The case discovered itself within the Virginia Supreme Court docket earlier than touchdown in Washington.
Probably the most important query at stake was whether or not or not Virginia’s legal guidelines violated the Equal Safety Clause of the 14th Modification.
Let’s brush up on the 14th Modification shortly.
It is the one that claims, partly: “No State shall make or implement any regulation which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of residents of the US; nor shall any State deprive any individual of life, liberty, or property, with out due means of regulation; nor deny to any individual inside its jurisdiction the equal safety of the legal guidelines.”
Philip Hirschkop, one of many attorneys arguing for the Lovings, went as far as to name Virginia’s guidelines “slavery legal guidelines, pure and easy” that robbed “the Negro race of their dignity.”
R.D. McIlwaine, arguing for Virginia, tried to make the case that his opponent was making an attempt to learn into the Structure and provides it new that means. He mentioned marriage was a matter for the states to determine. He additionally argued that “intermarried households are subjected to a lot higher pressures and issues than these of the intramarried,” evaluating intermarried {couples} to polygamists and the incestuous.
The justices had been having none of it, and on June 12, 1967, they unanimously dominated that the aim of miscegenation legal guidelines was rooted in racism and violated the Structure.
It took till 2000 for the ultimate state, Alabama, to strike down its ban on interracial marriage. Richard Loving died in 1975. Mildred died in 2008.
