Academic

Mildred Loving Has Died.

By Ann Bartow

In an article that (oddly, in my view) refers to Loving as “the Matriarch of Interracial Marriage,” Yahoo News reports:

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday….

… Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

They had married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Returning to their Virginia hometown, they were arrested within weeks and convicted on charges of “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth,” according to their indictments.

The couple avoided a year in jail by agreeing to a sentence mandating that they immediately leave Virginia. They moved to Washington and launched a legal challenge a few years later.

You can read the Supreme Court opinion in Loving v. Virginia here. You can listen to the oral argument that preceeded the opinion here.

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).