Challenger of interracial marriage laws Mildred Loving dies at 68

Mildred Loving, one-half of the married couple whose legal challenge overturned laws against interracial marriage nationwide, has died at 68.

The Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia was a watershed victory for freedom and equality, but Mildred liked to say that she was just fighting for her love of her husband, Richard. The two were forced to marry in Washington, D.C., because the state of Virginia would not issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. A few weeks after returning home they were awoken in the middle of the night by the local sheriff, who arrested them for violating the laws against miscegenation in Virginia, laws with traditional roots that went back centuries.

The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, minced few words in declaring the nature of their “crime”:

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.

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The judge sentenced the Lovings to a year in prison but offered to suspend the sentence if they left Virginia forever. With help from the ACLU and the NAACP, they challenged that ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a unanimous court overturned all state miscegenation laws. The Court rejected Bazile’s religious argument with a much stronger legal one:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Mildred Loving was a private person, and she rarely spoke publicly about the case, especially after her beloved husband Richard died in 1975. But on June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case, she issued a public statement in which she argued that the battle she took part in is identical to the battle for same-sex marriage today. She wrote:

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.

Mildred Loving inspired many with the courage and dignity she displayed in the face of hatred and oppression. Her voice, though heard rarely, carried a moral credibility that few can muster. She will be missed.