{"id":31855,"date":"2013-06-20T21:37:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=31855"},"modified":"2016-06-10T17:21:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T17:21:22","slug":"mildred-loving-who-battled-ban-on-mixed-race-marriage-dies-at-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=31855","title":{"rendered":"Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2008-05-06<\/p>\n

Douglas Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia<\/a> for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws<\/a>, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va<\/a>. She was 68.<\/p>\n

Peggy Fortune, her daughter, said the cause was pneumonia.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books \u2014 those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren<\/a>, who in 1954 wrote the court\u2019s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education<\/a><\/em>, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

In Loving v. Virginia<\/a><\/em>, Warren wrote that miscegenation<\/a> laws violated the Constitution\u2019s equal protection clause<\/a>. \u201cWe have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding<\/strong>, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, \u201cWho is this woman you\u2019re sleeping with?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Loving answered, \u201cI\u2019m his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple\u2019s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, \u201cThat\u2019s no good here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law<\/a>, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 24 states that barred marriages between races…<\/p>\n

…Mildred Delores Jeter\u2019s family had lived in Caroline County, Va.<\/a>, for generations, as had the family of Richard Perry Loving. The area was known for friendly relations between races, even though marriages were forbidden. Many people were visibly of mixed race, with Ebony<\/em> magazine reporting in 1967 that black \u201cyoungsters easily passed<\/a> for white in neighboring towns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mildred\u2019s mother was part Rappahannock Indian<\/a>, and her father was part Cherokee<\/a>. She preferred to think of herself as Indian rather than black.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mildred and Richard began spending time together when he was a rugged-looking 17 and she was a skinny 11-year-old known as Bean.<\/strong> He attended an all-white high school for a year, and she reached 11th grade at an all-black school.<\/p>\n

When Mildred became pregnant at 18, they decided to do what was elsewhere deemed the right thing and get married. They both said their initial motive was not to challenge Virginia law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have thought about other people,\u201d Mr. Loving said in an interview with Life<\/em> magazine in 1966, \u201cbut we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us<\/em>.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68 The New York Times 2008-05-06 Douglas Martin Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,1467,8,20,693],"tags":[11881,70,2754,14979,1335,14978],"class_list":["post-31855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-law","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-douglas-martin","tag-loving-v-virginia","tag-mildred-loving","tag-new-york-timesthe-new-york-times","tag-richard-loving","tag-richard-perry-loving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47502,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31855\/revisions\/47502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}