How Interracial Marriage Bans Ended | Loving v. Virginia

Corrections:
4:20 The arrow points to Mississippi. Alabama is to the east.

In episode 23 of Supreme Court Briefs, a woman with darker skin and a man with lighter skin get married and get arrested and kicked out of the state of Virginia. For several years, they fight for their marriage all the way to the Supreme Court.

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Mildred Jeter, a woman of both African American and Native American ancestry, discovers she is pregnant, and Richard Loving, a Caucasian, is the father. The two decide to get married, and they live happily ever after. The end.

Except wait. Nope, in the state of Virginia, interracial marriages are illegal. So Jeter and Loving go up to Washington, D.C., where interracial marriages are legal, tie the knot on June 2, 1958, and return home to live with each other back in Virginia. Well somehow word must got out about the couple, because shortly thereafter, the local sheriff ordered a late night raid of their home.
So yeah, in the middle of the night, police not only burst into their home but also into their bedroom, hoping to catch them having sex, which also was illegal. The Lovings were actually sleeping, and awoke to being arrested for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, the law that said whites and non-whites could not marry each other.

The Lovings pled guilty, and the judge sentenced them to one year in prison. However, their sentence was suspended as long as they moved out of Virginia and never returned as a married couple for 25 years.

So the Lovings moved up to the same city where they got married, Washington D.C. The Lovings did occasionally sneak back down to Virginia, but for five years they lived in DC and basically hated it. As Mildred and Richard’s family grew in DC, they missed their family back home, and probably the clean country air. In 1964, tired of living as an exile, Mildred wrote Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Kennedy referred her letter to the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, who then reached out to the Lovings.

The ACLU’s two volunteer cooperating attorneys, Bernie Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings to the Virginia Caroline County Circuit Court, requesting it to allow the marriage since denying it broke the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The County Circuit Court didn’t respond, so Cohen and Hirschkop sued the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. After no luck there, the ACLU helped the Lovings appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court. While the Virginia Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of the interracial marriage ban, it did get rid of the sentence banning the Lovings from the state of Virginia.

It’s important to note that during all of this, Mildred and Richard Loving got a lot of national media attention. They absolutely were not looking for all of this attention, but it obviously did help raise awareness of their struggle, especially after Life Magazine came out and took pictures of them.
Anyway, the ACLU pretty much expected all the pushback from the state of Virginia, so they were well prepared to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Lovings decided to stay home on April 10, 1967, when the Court heard oral arguments. By that time, nine years had passed since they got married.

On June 12, 1967, the Court announced it had unanimously sided with the Lovings, overturning their convictions and ruling Virginia’s interracial marriage ban as unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion, which stated that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act went against both the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Said Warren: “The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

[iammrbeat]

My book about everything you need to know about the Supreme Court is now available!

[CynicalHistorian]

The Warren Court was kinda amazing. Thanks for joining the show, and we've gotta do it again sometime.

[RoseAbrams]

how could you possibly deny love for people named Loving?

[connro]

hmm...alabama seems to have moved a bit to the west...

[Justagamerhere]

See kids, there is no problem with writing a letter to the attorney general or your local politician :-)

[ABtheButterfly]

"catch them having sex"

wow, perverted much?
I know the internet hasn't been invented yet but damn, let people have their privacy

[peterhickman]

My grandparents(My grandmother black, my grandfather white) got married about a year after the decision. And, while living in MASSACHUSETS, the state that is more liberal than American, got a cross burned on their lawn. I hate the world.

[rateeightx]

I feel like this has got to be the best-named Supreme Court case, Or one of the best at least. Loving is just such a fitting name for someone who would wind up, Well, Making more loving legal.

[flamefusion]

I haven't heard of this court case. It is crazy how only about half a century ago, you couldn't marry among racial lines.

[richardpodnar]

I recall that in the film "Loving" it was brought out that the couple was not allowed to live in the home they had owned in Virginia due to the racial law.. Despicable!

[MicheleHerrmann]

I was said to learn that Mr. Loving died in a car accident a few years later. Wish they could have grown older together.

[dooterscoots]

I live in Virginia I always find myself ashamed of it when it comes to Virginia's past like how we were the first to adopt eugenics as one of the big ones.

[Fabrissable]

"The last state to give them off the books was Alabama..."
Me: Oh so I guess they probably held it for like 2-3 years at max because it was at this point undefendable.
"...in 2000"
Me: *spits water* What in the actual godforsaken world?!

[mummyneo]

I think the court had made the right decision because if you like someone you should be able to marry them no matter what race or gender they are!

[ADRgman]

I like the fact that the Supreme Court said that interracial marriage is not unconstitutional since my girlfriend is a Native American woman and I’m a Caucasian man who are in love with each other. Happy Valentines Day!

[ericasmith]

Thank you for these! I teach 11th grade English and we've been covering major Supreme Court Cases and analyzing opinions. I've shown this, the Korematsu v. US, and the Roe v. Wade videos and I really think these help introduce the background of these cases to my students. Continue doing a great job and making these videos, which are very student friendly!

[ewangent]

A grave sin, I think as a Scotsman and a Brit I think we should be proud of the fact that in the 1770s we even then allowed interracial marriage. It does make me wonder whether the case of Joseph Knight had some influence on the American Revolution.

[OrangeHarrisonRB]

Fun Fact: Alabama's ban on interracial marriage wasn't lifted until 2000 because they had to get an expert from Mississippi to edit the constitution, Alabama having banned literacy in 1869.

[damonika]

A lot of interracial marriages in the US wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for this case. Thanks Mildred and Richard Loving.

[delightfullydakota]

I can’t imagine being arrested for simply being married to someone of a different race.It is amazing that one couple can change the such racist laws across the nation forever.There are still some people that believe interracial marriage is bad in the small, Southern town I live in.It is so stupid that some people are still struck in the 1960s.