Loving: marriage equality circa 1965

I went to see the film "Loving" last night, and I was reminded once again of the many historical events that were once current events for me. "Loving" is the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who challenged the slavery-era laws that made their interracial marriage a crime in Virginia and many other states--until 1967. Today that seems almost unbelievable! I was 20 years old then, on the verge of adulthood, and I had grown up on a country with laws such as these.

1967. That year the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ACLU, which had taken the Lovings' case to the high court. The process took years. Marriage equality--no one yet thought in terms of LBGT--became the law of the land when anti-miscegenation laws were declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision. The film follows the historical record quite accurately, a narrative for younger generations of a time when America had its own version of Apartheid. To read Ann Hornaday's excellent review of "Loving" in The Washington Post and to see photos and video, click here.

The topic of interracial marriage came up in my family, possibly in the spring of 1965, when LIFE Magazine ran a story on the Loving family and their case. This was one of the photos taken by Grey Villet, reproduced by the actors in the film.

Villet snapped this one of the couple's three children, along with numerous others showing their warm family life. 

Like millions of other families who subscribed to this magazine, my parents very likely read this story. I may have missed it, though, as I was in my first year at Mundelein College and right around the time the story ran, I was boarding a bus along with other students to join Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march as it entered Selma, Alabama. I have no photos of myself from this time, but here is one of our Mundelein group which later appeared in the student newspaper, The Skyscraper.

There were many discussions and arguments at home before and after the march, as my parents struggled to understand this sea change in American politics and culture, and I struggled to unlearn the racism I absorbed growing up in  1950s white America. I had no doubts about the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, but I was struggling to apply it beyond voting rights and the right to sit at a lunch counter. I think I remember my parents talking about interracial marriage as being a personal matter, but those couples ought to pause before having children and condemning them to a difficult life. I'm not sure I had an effective answer to that yet, as I was still trying to work out "morality" and social change in that tumultuous, life-changing decade. My father always argued that "you can't legislate morality", but I was starting to learn in my political science classes that you certainly can. I lived in Chicago, a very segregated city, but I got a job on campus with the Upward Bound program--part of the War on Poverty--and met African-American students for the first time. I learned and thought and tried to act. Today I feel grateful to have come of age during that time. 

Today it takes my breath away that the Lovings endured the harassment and fear that they experienced for nearly 10 years before the Supreme Court's landmark decision. The film recounts their arrest 5 weeks after their 1958 wedding, when the sheriff and his deputies burst into their bedroom. They avoided prison only by pleading guilty to violating the Racial Integrity Act and agreeing to leave the state for 25 years. They moved to Washington D.C. and raised their growing family there for the next 5 years before returning home to Virginia--with the possibility of re-arrest always hanging over them. 

While still in the city, Mildred drew courage from The Civil Rights Movement, which offered promise of an end to their exile. She wrote to Sen. Robert Kennedy, seeking help, and he sent her request on to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The novice volunteer ACLU attorney joined forces with another lawyer who knew how to handle the case, and they took it all the way past two losing appeals to the Supreme Court. The film acknowledges the Lovings' reluctance to be in the spotlight during this process; they did not attend the high court hearing. In a 1966 interview in LIFE, they insisted they were not going forward because they wanted to be the ones to overturn discrimination.  "We're doing it for us--because we want to live here."

Seven years after the ruling, Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver. Mildred, who passed away from pneumonia in 2008, publicly showed her support for the right of everyone to marry--black or white, gay or straight.

  

Dr. King's words about the moral arc of the universe being long, but bending toward justice, resonates with many, but especially with the Lovings' one surviving child. Peggy Loving Fortune said in a People Magazine article after the movie came out, that she is "overwhelmed with emotion" and "so grateful" that her parents' story is finally being told. This film touched me deeply as well. Don't miss it.