The Supreme Court unanimously struck down Virginia's ban on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia, ruling that laws prohibiting marriage based on race violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of due process and equal protection. The case took its name from Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple arrested in their own bedroom for the crime of being married to each other.
Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was Black and Native American, married in Washington D.C. in 1958 to evade Virginia's ban, then returned home to Caroline County. Police raided their bedroom at night, hoping to catch them in the act of sex, and arrested them simply for the marriage certificate hanging on their wall. A judge sentenced them to a year in prison, suspended on condition they leave Virginia for 25 years.
The trial judge, Leon Bazile, wrote that 'Almighty God' had separated the races and that interracial marriage violated his design, a rationale the ACLU seized on when the Lovings, exiled in Washington and homesick, sought help years later. Chief Justice Earl Warren's opinion demolished this reasoning, declaring marriage 'one of the basic civil rights of man' and calling Virginia's law an exercise in 'invidious racial discrimination.'
The ruling voided similar laws in sixteen states still enforcing them. Mildred Loving, who rarely sought the spotlight, later said simply that she believed the ruling was 'God's work.' The case's name gave later commentators an irresistible shorthand, and June 12 is now celebrated informally in the US as 'Loving Day,' commemorating a couple who wanted nothing more than to live together in their own home.
Key people: Richard Loving, Mildred Loving, Earl Warren