Mixed Race Studies

Mark Loving on the film ‘Loving’ and a Supreme Court case that changed the nation

Eastern Mennonite University
Harrisonburg, Virginia
2016-11-03

Lauren Jefferson, Editor-in-Chief

Mark Loving, a sophomore at Eastern Mennonite University, shows a photo of his great-grandparents, Mildred and Richard Loving. In 1967, the couple won a Supreme Court case that eventually led to freedom for mixed-race couples to marry and live together in Virginia. Their story is featured in “Loving,” a film opening Nov. 4. (Photos by Londen Wheeler Photography; inset photo, Bettman/Getty)

In his native Caroline County, Virginia, Mark Loving II’s family name is well known. Beyond generations of rootedness, there is both a plaque at the courthouse and a historical marker about his family history. One reason why Mark came to Eastern Mennonite University: some anonymity in a rural landscape not dissimilar to home.

But being one of a crowd is shortly coming to an end for this sophomore kinesiology major who plays basketball and has plans to become a physical therapist. On Friday, Nov. 4, a movie will be released, the title of which is one word: his surname.

“I don’t think too many people know,” he said, “but that’s starting to change. The word has got out there.”…

Read the entire article here.

In my family, racial passing and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal. It was what the writer Nella Larsen called a hazardous business, “this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.” The first time someone perceived me as white, it made me wonder if they thought I was passing or trying to pass. But unlike the character Clare in Larsen’s novel Passing, I did not become untethered or unhinged from my identity; I did not feel a desire to cross into whiteness. Instead I grabbed hold of my identity even tighter, as if somehow my blackness could slip away.

W. Ralph Eubanks, “Passing Strange,” The Common, November 4, 2016. http://www.thecommononline.org/features/passing-strange.

50 years ago: Tucson couple broke down barriers to interracial marriage

Arizona Capital Times
2009-11-01

Luige del Puerto

Henry Oyama was beaming as he led his new bride from the altar of St. Augustine Cathedral in Tucson 50 years ago. She was wearing a traditional white wedding dress, and her left hand was grasping the right arm of her man.

The photos taken that day might leave the impression nothing was out of place, as if it was any other marriage ceremony. But in 1959 the country was on the brink of a major cultural shift to eliminate racism, and the Oyamas had just fought a landmark court battle to overturn an Arizona law that prohibited interracial marriage.

Because Henry Oyama is of Japanese descent and Mary Ann Jordan was white, together they broke down the race-based law that was intended to keep them apart.

The law itself made it illegal for a Caucasian to marry a non- Caucasian, so Oyama felt the onus was on the white person who wanted to marry someone of another race.

“Naturally, the criticism would come more to her,” Oyama said, adding that Mary Ann’s parents believed at the time that their daughter was making herself a target.

The 83-year-old Oyama knows better than most what it’s like to be a target. He spent two years in an internment camp at the beginning of World War II, and he later served the United States as a spy in Panama…

Read the entire article here.

The White and Black Worlds of Loving v. Virginia

TIME
2016-11-04

Arica L. Coleman

AP Photo Richard and Mildred Loving on this Jan. 26, 1965, prior to filing a suit at Federal Court in Richmond, Va.

Richard and Mildred Loving—the couple who inspired the new film Loving—lived in a world where race was not simply binary

Hollywood interpretations of true events always take some liberties with the truth, but the new film Loving—based on the intriguing story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs of the case Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia—adheres relatively closely to the historical account. Writer-director Jeff Nichols’ two-hour film chronicles the nine-year saga of the couple’s courtship, marriage, arrest, banishment and Supreme Court triumph in 1967, which declared state proscriptions against interracial marriage unconstitutional.

The film also, however, sticks close to popular myths that have dogged the case for decades, particularly by contextualizing the story within a black/white racial binary—when in fact Richard and Mildred Loving are prime examples of the way such lines have long been blurred…

Read the entire article here.