090223 Way Black History Fact - Loving v. Virginia

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Our Way Black History Fact highlights Loving v. Virginia—the case of a White man and his Black wife that led to the federal government clearing the path for interracial marriage in the U.S.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, it is time for the way black history fact.
In today's way black history fact comes from history dot
com and we are talking about Loving versus Virginia. So
for those who don't know, Loving versus Virginia was a
Supreme Court case that struck down state laws banning interracial
marriage in the United States. The plaintiffs in the case
were Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a

(00:21):
black woman whose marriage was deemed illegal according to Virginia
state law. With the help of the American Civil Liberties
Union the ACOU, the Loving's appealed to the US Supreme Court,
which ruled unanimously that so called anti missagenation statutes were
unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Demendment. Decision is often cited as
a watershed moment in the dismantling of Jim Crow race laws.

(00:44):
So what is missagenation? Loving case was a challenge to
centuries of centuries of American laws banning misagenation, i e.
Any marriage or interbreeding among different races. Restrictions on missagenation
existed as early as the colonial era, and of the
fifty US states, all but nine states had a law
against the practice at some point in their history. Early
attempts to dispute race based marriage bans and court met

(01:07):
with little success. One of the first and most noteworthy
cases what was eighteen eighty three's Paced versus Alabama, in
which the US Supreme Court ruled that in Alabama antime
missagenation law was unconstitutional because it punished black people and
white people equally. In eighteen eighty eight, meanwhile, the High
Court ruled that the states had the authority to regulate marriage.
By the nineteen fifties, more than half the states in

(01:29):
the Union, including every state in the South, still had
laws restricting marriage by racial classifications, and Virginia into racial
marriage was illegal under nineteen twenty four's Racial Integrity Act,
while those who violated the law risked anywhere from one
to five years in a state penitentiary. All right. The
central figures in Loving versus Virginia were Richard Loving and

(01:50):
Mildred Jeter, a couple from the town of Central Point
in Caroline County, Virginia. Richard a white construction worker, and
Mildred a woman of mixed Black and Native American ancestry.
The longtime friends who fallen in love in June of
nineteen fifty eight. They exchanged wedding vows in Washington, d C.
Where interracial marriage was legal, and then return home to Virginia.

(02:11):
On July eleventh, nineteen fifty eight, just five weeks after
their wedding, Lovings were woken in their bed at about
two am and arrested by the local sheriff. Richard and
Mildred were indicted on charges of violating Virginia's anti misagination law,
which deemed interracial marriages of felony. When the couple pleaded
guilty the following year, Judge Leon M. Zile sentenced them

(02:32):
to one year in prison, but suspended the sentence on
the condition that they would leave Virginia and not return
together for a period of twenty five years. Following their
court case, the Lovings were forced to leave Virginia and
relocate to Washington, d C. The couple lived in exile,
the nation's capital, for several years, and raised three children,
sons Sydney and Donald, and a daughter, Peggy, but they

(02:55):
longed to return to the hometown. In nineteen sixty three,
a desperate Mildred Loving wrote a letter to US Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy asking for assistance. Kennedy referred the
Lovings to the ACLU, which agreed to take their case.
The Lovings being their legal battle. In November nineteen sixty three,
with the aid of Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirshkopp, two

(03:15):
ACLU young lawyers, the couple filed the motion asking for
Judge Basil to vacate their conviction and set aside their sentences,
and Basil refused. Cohen and Herkshop took the case to
the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which upheld the original ruling.
Following another appeal, the case made its way to the
United States Supreme Court in nineteen sixty seven, and Supreme

(03:37):
Court announced its ruling and Loving versus Virginia on June twelfth,
nineteen sixty seven, in a unanimous decision that justice is
found in Virginia's interracial marriage law was in violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. These people are
the reason why you can now marry whoever you want.