Mildred Loving

May 20 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THE judge said the man shouldn’t have married the woman because God put black people on one continent and white people on another.

There was, however, a flaw in his logic. God had put neither black people nor white people in America.

And, if the circumstances had not been so terrible, this could have raised smiles on the couple before him, charged with “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth (of Virginia)”.

For Mildred Loving was half Cherokee, probably the only person in that courtroom with Native American blood.

But she was also part African and therefore “coloured”. Judge Leon Bazile regarded the coming together of the races as “interference” with God’s “arrangements”. But this didn’t permit inter-racial marriages under Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (1924).

Down the years, there had been much black/white mixing and hanky-panky, but this always stopped short of marriage.

Mildred Jeter had been friendly with Richard Loving, a builder, in Central Point, rural Virginia, since she was 11 and he was 17.

When she was expecting in 1958, the couple decided to marry. As this was not allowed in their state, they made the short journey to Washington DC, returning to their home a few miles north of Richmond.

Five weeks later, the sheriff and two deputies broke into their house at midnight.

One shone his face into Loving’s face and asked him whom the woman was. Bewildered, he did not answer, but heavily pregnant Mildred kept cool: “I’m his wife,” she said.

Their wedding certificate wasn’t accepted under Virginia’s law and they were jailed for a few days before the court case.

Rather than go to prison, they reluctantly pleaded guilty and settled in Washington and had three children.

Although the court order forbade them to return home for 25 years, the mood in the US was changing as the Civil Rights movement gained sway. They contacted Bobby Kennedy, attorney-general and JFK’s brother, who put them in touch with the Civil Liberties’ Union, which took the case to the Supreme Court.

The family returned home in 1967 and Richard built them a new house. He was killed by a drunken driver in 1975. Although shy, Mildred never wavered in her beliefs, arguing that homosexual couples should also be able to marry.

Mildred Loving, upholder of love; born July 22, 1939, died May 2, 2008.