Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Not so very long ago

Sad to relay that Mildred Loving died today.
In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail.

The Supreme Court opinion overturning their conviction was issued in 1967. My father was 23 years old.

Not so very long ago.

1 comment:

B. E. Busby said...

I'm grateful to be living on the Left Coast and in particular in California which, following in the footsteps of Hawaii, is immensely accepting of melding two races without people staring, pointing or, Gawd forbid, snickering as is still, sadly, common on the East coast, especially in the mid-Atlantic South.