Loving v. Virginia
On June 2, 1958, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were married in Washington, D.C. Five weeks later, police broke into their bedroom in Virginia at 2 a.m. and arrested them for being married. Nine years later, the Supreme Court told the country that what had just happened should never have been legal.
Mildred Jeter was a Black woman from Caroline County, Virginia. Richard Loving was a white man from the same county. They had grown up together, fallen in love, and decided to get married. In 1958, this was a felony in Virginia. The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 — one of 16 states' anti-miscegenation laws still on the books — made it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison for a white person to marry anyone of another race, and vice versa. The Lovings knew this. They drove to Washington, D.C., where the marriage was legal, and were married on June 2, 1958. They then returned home to Caroline County to live with Mildred's family.
Five weeks after the wedding, in the early hours of July 11, 1958, the local sheriff and two deputies walked into their bedroom without a warrant and arrested them both. Richard Loving pointed to the marriage certificate on the wall as proof they were legally married. The sheriff's response was that it was no good in Virginia. They were charged under the Racial Integrity Act and held in the county jail. When they appeared before the judge, he was unmistakably clear about his position: 'Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.' He sentenced them each to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together.
For five years, the Lovings lived in Washington, D.C. — exiled from their home, their families, their county. Mildred wrote a letter in 1963 to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, asking if anything could be done. Kennedy referred the case to the ACLU. Attorneys Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschbaum took the case and filed a motion in the Virginia state courts to vacate the original conviction. The state courts denied the motion. The case went to the Supreme Court. The state of Virginia argued, consistent with 16 states' laws, that the prohibition was constitutional because it applied equally to both races — both Mildred and Richard had been convicted. This was the same 'equal application' argument that had been used to defend segregation under Plessy v. Ferguson.
On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9-0 ruling in Loving v. Virginia. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the court, stated that 'the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.' The Virginia law violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. By extension, all anti-miscegenation laws in the 16 remaining states were immediately invalidated. At the time of the ruling, 72 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters they disapproved of interracial marriage. Richard Loving died in a car accident in 1975, struck by a drunk driver. Mildred Loving lived until 2008, long enough to see the ruling cited in arguments for marriage equality.
Mildred Loving, in a 2007 statement on the 40th anniversary of the ruling, said she believed all Americans should have the right to marry who they love. She was explicitly referring to same-sex couples: 'I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life.' In 2015, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, the majority opinion cited Loving v. Virginia as controlling precedent. The Lovings, who had wanted nothing more than to live in their home county, left a legal legacy that shaped American marriage law for generations.
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.Chief Justice Earl Warren, Loving v. Virginia, 1967
Loving v. Virginia is one of the cases that makes the Fourteenth Amendment's promise concrete. Anti-miscegenation laws were not fringe policy — they were law in 16 states in 1967, backed by courts, enforced by police, and supported by substantial public opinion. The argument used to defend them — that the law applied equally to both races — was the same argument used to defend school segregation in Plessy. The Supreme Court had already rejected that argument in Brown. Loving extended that logic to marriage. But what the Lovings' story illustrates beyond the legal doctrine is the human cost of these laws: two people from the same county, in love, who spent five years in exile from their home because the state decided their relationship was a felony. The Lovings did not want to be civil rights icons. They wanted to go home. The fact that their case changed American law is a testament to how normal people, refusing to accept abnormal injustice, produce extraordinary results.