Mildred Loving died May 2.  It just hit the news Monday.  Who was Mildred Loving?  She’s the Black woman up there with the White gentleman.  Hmm, what’s so special about that?

Well, in the sixties, it was not only “special,” it was pretty damned illegal.  

Every law student learns this case, and they never forget it because, the name was so damned perfect for the issue.  Loving v. Virginia.  Love v. bigotry.  Loving won.

Here is the brief history from wikipedia:

“Mildred Loving filed and won a landmark U.S. court appeal in defense of her own interracial marriage that became the legal standard used to eradicate laws against mixed marriage across the country.

Loving was born Mildred Delores Jeter, of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, and married a white man named Richard Loving in June, 1958. The Lovings traveled to the District of Columbia to be married, but on their return to their home in Central Point, Virginia they were charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth" according to Virginia's anti-miscegenation law.

The Lovings pled guilty and were forced to leave Virginia to avoid going to jail, ordered not to return together as a couple for 25 years. A few years later, frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union. The legal challenge "Loving v. Virginia" went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled on June 12, 1967 that any ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional.”

Ok.  They were legally married, but in those days (yeah, 1958, same year winedog was born) interracial marriage was still banned in many states.  In fact, in those days, what we now think of as basic civil rights were granted and taken away at whim by the individual states.   Here, two people legally married were denounced by a neighbor (here comes a little history not in wikipedia,) the police came to their home at midnight, busted in, hauled them to jail, prosecuted them, and then banned them from the state for 25 years.  Did you know internal exile existed in America back in the good old days?  Washington D.C. isn’t the Gulag, but still.  They filed suit because they wanted to be able to cross the damned Potomac to visit their family together.  It was illegal for them to go to Thanksgiving dinner as a couple.

It’s so popular to slag on the sixties, the Kennedys, the ACLU, but they sure got this one right.  So many people don’t understand how many of what they consider their basic civil rights were the gained by hard battles, and how recent those battles were.

Several years ago, Mrs. Loving released a statement on the 40th anniversary of the decision which was in 1967.  Think about it.  Same year as the Summer of Love, and not that long ago

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

“When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “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,” a “basic civil right.”

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but 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. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

You know, I never even imagined that mixed marriage or dating was an issue until I moved east.  Sure, I watched “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, but it was an old movie.  Then I moved to Detroit. And I’m walking down the street with some of the employees from Texas, and they said “that’s something I can’t stand to look at.”  I looked where they were indicating, and it was a black man and a white woman.  Initially I didn’t get it.  Typical me, my reaction was “what, you don’t like plaid pants?”  The response was “no, you know.”  I really didn’t.  I had to learn what “you know” meant.  I also learned, as I went to lunch with a black woman colleague, that the black community of Detroit (and other places) could be just as bigoted.  My colleague and I were both form SF. 

Now, when I listen to idiot politicians using gay marriage as wedge issue, I think of Mrs. Loving.  That lady had her head on right.  I live in a City where gay marriage was “legalized” for something like 10 days.  During those 10 days, the line at City Hall wrapped around the block.  I drove by on the way to one of Legally Blonde’s dog parties and got stuck in the traffic.  I saw people I’d known as couples for years lined up, hoping against hope I suppose, to get a legal document to memorialize what they already knew, that they were a couple for life.  I saw some with the children they’d had, or the children they’d adopted, the kids totally excited about mom and mom or dad and dad getting married.  There was a total run on flowers in town, as people across the nation were phoning in orders for flowers to be delivered to anybody inline.

We seem to have missed the fire and brimstone.  Cats and dogs did not fall from the sky.  Somehow, when all was over, the world hadn’t ended and gay and straight people went on about their business.  I haven’t heard of a single straight marriage falling apart because of all those people who got married that day (how would that happen?  Really.  Would all the straight marriages fall apart because one of the parties could have a gay marriage?  Wouldn’t the just skulk around public toilets? (Fancy meeting you here, Senator Craig.)

Mrs. Loving had it right.  Two people who love each other should be allowed to marry.  The people who can’t stand that those two people are married can shut their effing gobs.  Love will ultimately conquer prejudice, bigotry and hate.  Not today, not tomorrow, but ultimately.

Thanks Mildred.  See you on the other side.