The LuLac Edition #2936, June 12th, 2015

OF LOVE, MARRIAGE AND EQUALITY

Richard and Mildred Loving. (Photo: Time Magazine).

As the debate simmers about gay marriage here in the United States, we should pause to remember the case of Richard and Mildred Loving. 48 years ago today the Supreme Court ruled that a man and woman of different racial backgrounds could wed in the United States. Prior to that decision that was not the case.
In 1958 Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, both of Central Point, Caroline County, are married in Washington, D.C. On July 11, 1958 - Caroline County commonwealth's attorney Bernard Mahon obtains warrants for the arrest of Richard and Mildred Loving. They are suspected of violating the state law that forbids interracial marriage. On July 13, 1958 - Central Point sheriff Garnett Brooks arrests Richard and Mildred Loving at the home of Mildred Loving's parents. They are charged with violating the state law that forbids interracial marriage.
Later in the fall in the month of October 1958 The circuit court of Caroline County issues an indictment against Mildred and Richard Loving stating that they are in violation of the state law that forbids interracial marriage.
• In January of 1959 - Judge Leon Bazile accepts Mildred and Richard Loving's guilty pleas and agrees to suspend their one-year jail sentences on the condition that they leave the state of Virginia and promise not to return as a couple for twenty-five years.
With the Civil Rights movement gaining momentum, in 1963 the Lovings engaged The American Civil Liberties Union to fight the state of Virginia. Through the years the case went through appeals until it reached The Supreme Court.
In Loving v. Virginia, decided on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriages as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The appellants, Richard and Mildred Loving, of Caroline County, had married in Washington, D.C., in June 1958 and then returned to Virginia, where they were arrested. After pleading guilty, they were forced to leave the state. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed motions and appeals on their behalf beginning in 1963, and after the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled against the Lovings in 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court heard their arguments. The case came after nearly 300 years of legislation in Virginia regulating interracial marriage and carefully defining which citizens could legally claim to be white. Two U.S. Supreme Court cases, Pace v. Alabama (1883) and Maynard v. Hill (1888), upheld the constitutionality of such laws. In 1924, the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity banned interracial marriage in Virginia while defining a white person as someone who had no discernible nonwhite ancestry. It was this law that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling said denied Virginians' "fundamental freedom" to marry. Loving v. Virginia is a landmark case, both in the history of race relations in the United States and in the ongoing political and cultural dispute over the proper definition of marriage.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Loving v. Virginia on April 10, 1967. The Lovings declined their attorneys' invitation to attend the hearing. On behalf of the commonwealth, Assistant Attorney General R. D. McIlwaine III argued that Virginia law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and that even if it did it would be legitimate on the grounds that it protected the state from the "sociological [and] psychological evils which attend interracial marriages." In particular, McIlwaine cited academic research that suggested "that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems than those of the intramarried and that the state's prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent."
For the Lovings, Hirschkop argued that Virginia law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equal protection under the law by denying potential spouses and their children their civil rights simply because of race. "These are slavery laws, pure and simple," he said. In reference to the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, Hirschkop noted that Virginia was "not concerned with racial integrity of the Negro race, only the white race." In fact, he noted, nonwhite non–African Americans could marry African Americans without penalty.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the courtroom came when Cohen, arguing that the law violated the Lovings' rights to due process, told the justices, "No matter how we articulate this, no matter which theory of the due process clause or which emphasis we attach to, no one can articulate it better than Richard Loving when he said to me, 'Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia.'"
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Loving v. Virginia on April 10, 1967. The Lovings declined their attorneys' invitation to attend the hearing. On behalf of the commonwealth, Assistant Attorney General R. D. McIlwaine III argued that Virginia law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and that even if it did it would be legitimate on the grounds that it protected the state from the "sociological [and] psychological evils which attend interracial marriages." In particular, McIlwaine cited academic research that suggested "that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems than those of the intramarried and that the state's prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent."
For the Lovings, Hirschkop argued that Virginia law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equal protection under the law by denying potential spouses and their children their civil rights simply because of race. "These are slavery laws, pure and simple," he said. In reference to the Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, Hirschkop noted that Virginia was "not concerned with racial integrity of the Negro race, only the white race." In fact, he noted, nonwhite non–African Americans could marry African Americans without penalty.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the courtroom came when Cohen, arguing that the law violated the Lovings' rights to due process, told the justices, "No matter how we articulate this, no matter which theory of the due process clause or which emphasis we attach to, no one can articulate it better than Richard Loving when he said to me, 'Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia.'"
On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Richard and Mildred Loving, striking down Virginia's law as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In his opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren described marriage as "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."Think of that, a unanimous Superme Court decision. Bet your bottom dollar that the decision on gay rights will not go by that margin.
The Lovings were married until the untimely death of Richard 40 years ago (June 29th) after the car he was driving was struck by a drunk driver in Caroline County. His wife Mildred died of pneumonia at her home in Central Point. She is buried with her husband at Saint Stephen's Baptist Church Cemetery in Central Point.
A footnote, in 2007, on the fortieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia, the group Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, releases a statement that attributes to Mildred Loving support for same-sex marriage. After her death, the Loving family denies that she held these views.
Sources: Encyclopedia Virginia, New York Times.