Loving v. Virginia

June 12, 2017 is the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia

Virginia residents Mildred Delores Jeter and Richard Perry Loving couldn't legally marry in their state. In June 1958, they married in the District of Columbia. On their return to Virginia they were charged with violating a state law which banned interracial marriage.

Mildred Loving, a Black and Native American woman, and Richard Loving, a Caucasian man, were convicted of felony charges in 1959 for marrying and sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia. The sentence was suspended pending their move (exile) out of Virginia.

The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia. In 1963 they initiated lawsuits to overturn their Virginia conviction on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Their Supreme Court case opened April 10, 1967 and was decided, in their favor, June 12, 1967.

The Supreme Court decision of June 12, 1967 affected and rescinded laws against interracial marriage in fifteen other states besides Virginia: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Alabama was the last state to abolish anti-miscegenation laws in its constitution—in November 2000.

Fourteen other states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming) had laws banning Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Native Hawaiians, or Filipinos from marrying whites; those state laws were repealed at various dates between 1948 to 1967 (prior to June).

Virginia and Maryland first passed their ‘anti-miscegenation’[1] laws in 1691 and 1692, respectively. At the end of the 18th century seven of the aforementioned states had laws in place. By the end of the 19th century, seventeen of the aforementioned states had followed suit. Four of the aforementioned states passed their first laws in the early 20th Century.

[1] Miscegenation, noun

1. marriage or cohabitation between two people from different racial groups, especially, in the U.S., between a black person and a white person:

In 1968 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that state laws prohibiting miscegenation were unconstitutional.

2. sexual relations between two people from different racial backgrounds that results in the conception of a mixed-race child.