June 12 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
The civil rights case was brought by Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Loving, under Virginia law a “colored” woman, who were arrested in Virginia for marrying each other in 1958. The Lovings pleaded guilty in return for a suspended sentence on the condition that they leave Virginia; they ultimately moved to Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court famously overturned the Lovings’ convictions in a unanimous 1967 decision, ruling that Virginia’s interracial marriage laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Until 1967, the state of Virginia deemed their marriage a felony, worthy of years in prison — but a changing politics and culture came just in time to free them to live in their home county in rural Virginia without having to fear once again being hauled out of bed in the middle of the night and off to jail,” said Virginia Tech professor Peter Wallenstein, an award-winning professor of history at Virginia Tech, who researches the civil rights struggle in America.
Wallenstein has published two books focusing on the Lovings and interracial marriage: “Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—an American History” (2002) and “Race, Sex, and the Freedom to Marry: Loving v. Virginia” (2014).
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