Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case
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The Trials of Marriage-
"He did not intend for the races to mix"
In 1958, childhood sweethearts, Richard P. Loving, a white man, and Mildred D. Jeter, a woman of African American and Cherokee descent, married in Washington D.C. to evade Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Despite their precautions, both were unaware that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute contained a clause penalizing interracial couples that left the state to marry. Within a few weeks of their honeymoon, the couple was arrested. The Lovings were sentenced to a year in jail, but the sentence was suspended if the couple left the state and did not return together for the next twenty-five years (Pascoe 273). The racism and animosity of the county circuit judge, Leon Bazile, was clear when sentencing the Lovings,
"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” (Henriques 25).
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Exiles of the State-
"They Told Us to Leave the State for 25 Years"
Afterwards the couple moved from their hometown of Central Point, Virginia to Washington D.C. In 1959, upon returning to Virginia together to celebrate Easter with family, the couple was rearrested. The couple became increasingly upset by their exile and sought to return home.
A 1967 interview with Richard and Mildred Loving:
A Plea for Help-
"We have three kids and cannot afford an attorney"
In 1963, the Mildred wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to ask if the recently passed Civil Rights Act would allow them to return to Virginia. Kennedy responded that the bill did not apply to her marriage, but referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) where ACLU lawyer, Bernie Cohen, agreed to take their case. |
Bernie Cohen, the Lovings' lawyer, reads Mildred's plea for help:
Loving v. Virgina: Legal Battle and Victory-
"Tell the Court I Love My Wife"
Cohen joined forces with Phil Hirschkop to defend the Lovings, and in 1966, the two appealed the Lovings' case to the Supreme Court. In additiont to the ACLU, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Japanese American Citizens League, the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, and the National Catholic Social Action Conference also proviced amicus briefs and support for the Lovings' case (Newbeck 166). In perhaps the case's most famous quote, Cohen stated,
The original recording of Cohen's statement to the Supreme Court:
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"...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" (Newbeck 176).
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Cohen and Hirschkop argued Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute was unconstitutional under the Fourteen Amendment's equal rights protection as well as the due process of law. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on the side of the Lovings, forever ending legislation against mixed-race couples in America.