LET'S CONNEcT
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Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter challenged discriminatory laws, winning the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia and paving the way for interracial marriage legalization.
Richard Loving was a white construction worker and labourer who loved drag-racing and sometimes won prices and trophies at the races. His father had worked for all the rich black people in their community for twenty five years.
Mildred Jeter was a black young woman who lived in Central Point. Her brothers were musicians who were a little popular among both the blacks and the whites of the community.
Richard raced with Mildred’s brothers sometimes and he was a very good friend of theirs’. He and Mildred became great friends and started dating as soon as Mildred got into high school. Mildred got pregnant at the age of eighteen for Richard and given the conservative nature of the times and Richard’s love for her, they had to get married.
One night while they slept, the Sheriff of Caroline County barged in to quiz Richard about Mildred, demanding to see their marriage license.
Richard and Mildred were eventually arrested, charged in court, and banished from the state of Virginnia.
The Lovings moved to the District of Washington and tried to settle there, but life in the city was difficult. The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the death of their youngest son, who was hit by a car across the street.
Jarred and exhausted by their experience in Washington D.C, they decided to file a suit to appeal the judgement that sent them there in the first place, so that they could return home. Mildred wrote Robert F Kennedy, the then Attorney General of the United States to do something about their sentence.
About their life at Central Point, Richard had this to say, "There's just a few people that live in this community, a few white and a few colored. And as I grew up, and as they grew up, we all helped one another. It was all, as I say, mixed together to start with and just kept goin' that way.”
On writing to the Attorney General, they were referred to the American Civil Liberties Union, and with the aid of the ACLU, they appealed the judge’s sentence. The charges against them were eventually dismissed on the grounds that they were violations of the Lovings’ rights as stated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Their monumental victory paved the way for the dismissal of Jim Crow laws, especially laws that had to do with the segregation of races and prohibition of intermarriage among the whites and the coloureds.
Mildred never remarried and forty years after the Supreme Court’s ruling, she had this to say; “I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about."
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