In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. …
Forty years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled:
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.
These convictions must be reversed.
It is so ordered.
Here’s an AP report on the Couple [That] Broke Marriage Barrier 40 Years Ago.
At the time the Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 1967, Virginia was one of 16 states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
Thanks to John for the tip.
I gave a speech about Miscegenation for my Sociology class in high school, and much of it was about the Loving’s case. (This was about 2 years after the Supreme Court decision.) So many years later it still amazes me that I actually lived in a time when so many states prohibited any inter-racial marriage. As I recall, in Arizona, Caucasians could only marry Caucasians, Asians could only marry Asians, Blacks could only marry Blacks, Native Americans could only marry Native Americans, and Mulattos (off-spring of one White and one Black parent) couldn’t legally marry anyone, not even another Mulatto. I’m sure it was the same in other states, as well.
It’s hard to imagaine now that only 40 years ago it was illegal to marry outside your race in much of the USA. In fact, I still remember the hateful, dagger glares we got when I traveled around rural Arizona with my Tohono O’Odham (Papago) boyfriend (I am Caucasian). And that was only 30 yeras ago.