Mildred Loving was the Virginia woman whose arrest with her white husband, Richard, for the crime of being married led to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia that struck down laws banning interracial marriage across the United States. She was of African American and Native American descent, she married Richard in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1958, because Virginia would not let them wed at home, and five weeks later the local sheriff arrested them in their bedroom in the middle of the night.1Caroline County VA. The Lovings Her decision, years later, to write a letter asking for help turned a private hardship into one of the most important civil rights rulings of the twentieth century.
Why Her Marriage Was a Crime in Virginia
Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 made it a felony for a white person to marry anyone the state classified as “colored.” The law reached beyond Virginia’s borders too: a companion provision made it a crime for residents to travel to another state to marry across racial lines and then come home. Because Mildred and Richard had always intended to live in Caroline County, their D.C. marriage certificate carried no weight in Virginia, and they were prosecuted under Sections 20-58 and 20-59 of the Virginia Code.2National Park Service. The Racial Integrity Act, 1924: An Attack on Indigenous Identity
The Arrest and Banishment
Sheriff Garnett Brooks of Caroline County led the nighttime raid, entering the Lovings’ bedroom and demanding to know who Mildred was to Richard.1Caroline County VA. The Lovings The marriage certificate hanging on their wall did not help them. Both were jailed in Bowling Green.
On January 6, 1959, the couple pleaded guilty before Judge Leon M. Bazile. He sentenced them each to a year in prison, then suspended the sentence on one condition: they had to leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. In his written opinion, Bazile said God had created the races and placed them on separate continents, which proved they were never meant to intermarry.3Library of Virginia. Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 1958-1966
The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C. They could live there legally as a married couple, but they were cut off from their families, their community, and the rural life they had built. They could not even visit Caroline County together without risking a year behind bars.
The Letter That Started the Case
For several years Mildred lived in D.C. quietly and unhappily. In June 1963, she wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and explained what had happened: the jailing, the banishment, the separation from family. Kennedy’s office referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union.1Caroline County VA. The Lovings Two young ACLU attorneys, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, took the case and began the long process of getting the convictions overturned.
What the Supreme Court Decided
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 10, 1967. Virginia’s defense rested on the argument that its law treated the races equally because it punished both the white and non-white spouse. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for a unanimous Court, rejected that theory. The fact that a racially discriminatory law punished people of different races equally did not remove it from the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition against racial discrimination. Virginia banned only interracial marriages involving white people, which showed the law’s real purpose: maintaining white supremacy.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v. Virginia
The Court also held that the statutes violated the Due Process Clause. Warren wrote that marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival,” and that the freedom to marry a person of another race “resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v. Virginia The Lovings’ convictions were reversed.
Richard, who never sought attention, had given Cohen a message to deliver to the justices. He told the lawyer to say only: “Tell the Court I love my wife.”
What Her Case Changed
The ruling did not touch Virginia alone. When the decision came down, 16 states still enforced bans on interracial marriage: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v. Virginia All of them became unenforceable overnight.
Removing the language from state law took much longer. Alabama was the last state to act, sending the question to voters in a 2000 ballot referendum. The measure passed, but roughly 40 percent of Alabama voters chose to keep the unenforceable ban in the state constitution.
Her Life After the Ruling and Her Legacy
Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver in 1975. Mildred returned to Caroline County and lived there quietly until her death in 2008, rarely giving interviews. In a statement marking the 40th anniversary of the ruling in 2007, she said she supported the freedom to marry for all Americans, “no matter their race, no matter their sex.”
Her case became one of the most cited precedents in American civil rights law. When the Supreme Court considered whether states could ban same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion drew on Loving for the principle that marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses work together to protect it. Chief Justice Roberts, in dissent, acknowledged the same core holding that racial restrictions on marriage were constitutionally indefensible.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Obergefell v. Hodges
Every year on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 decision, Loving Day is observed as a day of visibility and community for interracial couples and multiracial families. It carries her name because she wrote the letter.