{"id":47595,"date":"2016-06-12T23:40:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T23:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47595"},"modified":"2016-11-05T01:26:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T01:26:50","slug":"what-you-didnt-know-about-loving-v-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47595","title":{"rendered":"What You Didn\u2019t Know About Loving v. Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"

What You Didn\u2019t Know About <\/strong><\/em>Loving v. Virginia<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

TIME<\/a>
\n2016-06-10<\/p>\n

Arica L. Coleman<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The landmark civil rights Supreme Court case\u2014which made it illegal to ban interracial marriage<\/a>\u2014was about more than black and white<\/em><\/p>\n

When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia<\/em><\/a>, defendants Richard and Mildred Loving chose not to appear in person. In 1958, they had been convicted for the felony of miscegenation<\/a>. As lawyers presented their arguments, 17 states remained steadfast in their refusal to repeal such laws banning interracial marriages. But, though he did not attend the arguments, Richard sent a message to the justices: \u201cTell the Court I love my wife and it is just not fair that I cannot live with her in Virginia<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The justices unanimously agreed. On June 12, 1967, proscriptions against interracial marriage were declared unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

In the years since<\/a>, the couple\u2019s victory has often been seen as a touchstone<\/a> in the fight for black civil rights. The Lovings\u2019 lawyer\u2019s assertion before the court<\/a> that anti-miscegenation statutes were \u201c the most odious of the segregation laws and the slavery laws\u201d reinforced this assumption. As historian Peter Wallenstein<\/a> aptly stated in his book Tell the Court I Love My Wife<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThere was no doubt in anybody\u2019s mind as to the racial identities, white and black, of the people who claimed to be Mr. and Mrs. Loving.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Lovings\u2019 public persona was more myth than reality. While researching my book That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia<\/em><\/a>, I spoke to Mildred Loving, who died in 2008. \u201cI am not black,\u201d she told me during a 2004 interview. \u201cI have no black ancestry. I am Indian-Rappahannock<\/a>. I told the people so when they came to arrest me.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

What You Didn\u2019t Know About Loving v. Virginia TIME 2016-06-10 Arica L. Coleman The landmark civil rights Supreme Court case\u2014which made it illegal to ban interracial marriage\u2014was about more than black and white When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, defendants Richard and Mildred Loving chose not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,8,20,693],"tags":[2753,2752,70,12564,1335,19784,3521],"class_list":["post-47595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-arica-coleman","tag-arica-l-coleman","tag-loving-v-virginia","tag-mildred-jeeter-loving","tag-richard-loving","tag-time","tag-time-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47595","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=47595"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49788,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47595\/revisions\/49788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}