Happy Anniversary! Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving Marry
Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving married on this day in Washington, D.C., but it took the Supreme Court to make their marriage legal in the state where they lived, Virginia — nine years later. Mildred was African-American and Richard was white, and interracial marriage was illegal in that state.
The Lovings were arrested on July 11, 1958, for violating the Virginia law prohibiting interracial marriage. They pleaded guilty in January 1959 and were sentenced to one year in prison. The sentence was suspended on the condition that they leave the state. They moved to Washington, D.C.
Mildred later wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking for legal assistance. Kennedy felt there was nothing he could do, but he referred the case to the local ACLU chapter, where attorneys Bernard S. Cohen and Phil Hirschkopf decided to take the case. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court. In Loving v. Virginia, on June 12, 1967, the Court declared the Virginia law and all anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
The decision in Loving later had a significant impact on the Supreme Curt’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, ruling that same-sex marriage was constitutional.
Phil Hirschkopf, in private practice, took an early prisoners’ rights case in northern Virginia. Word got around and soon he was flooded with other prisoners’ cases. In response, the national office of the ACLU founded its National Prison Project, directed by Al Bronstein, which eventually sued a prison or prison system in every state in the U.S.
Read: Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law: An American History (2002)
See the acclaimed film, Loving (2016)
Watch the HBO documentary film on their story: The Loving Story (2011)
Learn more about the case: https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/loving-v-virginia-case-over-interracial-marriage