Kennedy then referred Mildred Loving to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In the mid-1950s, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear similar cases brought by an African-American woman in Alabama and by a Chinese-American man in Virginia. Loving v. Virginia, legal case, decided on June 12, 1967, in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously (9–0) struck down state antimiscegenation statutes in Virginia as unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

June 12th is now known as Loving Day, an unofficial celebration of multiracial love. Help us keep publishing stories that provide scholarly context to the news. Among her survivors were 11 great-grandchildren. Citations: Newbeck, P., & Wolfe, B. Loving v. Virginia (1967). They could only return to visit family if they traveled separately and were not in the Commonwealth at the same time. The Supreme Court begged to differ, and did so unanimously, calling Virginia’s law “repugnant” and designed to “maintain White Supremacy.”. 2, Taking a Stand in History (Winter, 1995), pp. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Loving_v_Virginia_1967. Artistic Exploration: Create a poster or newspaper article showing the U.S Supreme Court's decision to rule in favor of Loving. While the Lovings’ original judge claimed that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents […thus proving] that he did not intend for the races to mix,” the state of Virginia argued that since both white and black halves of the couple had been treated with equal punishment, the law was perfectly valid. The Lovings left, and filed suit in 1963. Seeking  a way to live in Virginia together, Mildred Loving wrote a letter to the United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking for his help. Try 7 Days Free to get access to 612 million+ pages, Search the Largest Online Newspaper Archive. Richard Perry Loving died in a car crash in 1975. The plaintiffs, Mildred and Richard Loving, of Caroline County, Virginia, had married in Washington D.C. in June, 1958 (at that time twenty-four states outlawed interracial marriage). Allowed tags:

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