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History > USA > Civil rights > Miscegenation laws
Loving v. Virginia 1967
Richard Loving kisses his wife Mildred as he arrives home from work,
King and Queen County, Virginia, April 1965.
Photograph: © Estate of Grey Villet http://life.time.com/history/richard-and-mildred-loving-grey-villet-photos-1966
Richard kisses his wife as he arrives home from work.
The Lovings were sentenced to one year in prison, suspended if they left Virginia and did not return together for at least 25 years.
The couple moved to Washington DC
Photograph: © Grey Villet, 1965
The Lovings, a marriage that changed history – in pictures In July 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested for interracial marriage, then a crime in their home state of Virginia. Life photographer Grey Villet spent a few weeks with them, two years before their case brought down the law. Here are some of his images of the heroic lovers from the book The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait G Wednesday 29 March 2017 11.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
Mildred and Richard Loving, pictured on their front porch in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1965.
In June 1958, the couple went to Washington DC to marry, to work around Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime.
After an anonymous tip, police officers raided their home a month later, telling the Lovings their marriage certificate was invalid.
In 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth’
Photograph: © Grey Villet, 1965
The Lovings, a marriage that changed history – in pictures In July 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested for interracial marriage, then a crime in their home state of Virginia. Life photographer Grey Villet spent a few weeks with them, two years before their case brought down the law. Here are some of his images of the heroic lovers from the book The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait G Wednesday 29 March 2017 11.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
The case went from the Virginia Caroline county circuit court, all the way to the US supreme court in Washington.
The Lovings did not attend the hearings in Washington, but Cohen conveyed a message from Richard: ‘Mr Cohen, tell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.’
The Supreme Court overturned the Lovings’ convictions in a unanimous decision in June 1967, ruling that the ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional and in violation of the 14th Amendment
Photograph: © Grey Villet, 1965
The Lovings, a marriage that changed history – in pictures In July 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested for interracial marriage, then a crime in their home state of Virginia. Life photographer Grey Villet spent a few weeks with them, two years before their case brought down the law. Here are some of his images of the heroic lovers from the book The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait G Wednesday 29 March 2017 11.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
Mildred and Richard Loving in 1965.
They married in 1958 but were told they could not live together in Virginia because of the state’s Racial Integrity Act.
Photograph: Associated Press
Bernard Cohen, Lawyer in Landmark Mixed-Marriage Case, Dies at 86 With Philip J. Hirschkop, he brought Loving v. Virginia to the Supreme Court, which struck down laws against interracial marriages. NYT Oct. 15, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
For five years, the Lovings lived in internal exile while they raised their three children, Peggy, Sidney and Donald, seen here playing in the fields near their Virginia home
The Lovings, a marriage that changed history – in pictures In July 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested for interracial marriage, then a crime in their home state of Virginia. Life photographer Grey Villet spent a few weeks with them, two years before their case brought down the law. Here are some of his images of the heroic lovers from the book The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait G Wednesday 29 March 2017 11.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
Mildred Delores Loving 1940-2008
black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06loving.html
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/04/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/07/
Laws banning "race-mixing" were enforced in Nazi Germany (the Nuremberg Laws) from 1935 until 1945, in certain U.S. states from the Colonial era until 1967 and in South Africa during the early part of the Apartheid era.
All these laws primarily banned marriage between spouses of different racially or ethnically defined groups, which was termed "amalgamation" or "miscegenation" in the U.S.
The laws in Nazi Germany and many of the U.S. states, as well as South Africa, also banned sexual relations between such individuals.
In the United States, the various state laws prohibited the marriage of whites and blacks, and in many states also the intermarriage of whites with Native Americans or Asians.
In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws.
From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws.
Although an "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928, no nation-wide law against racially mixed marriages was ever enacted.
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional.
With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that still had them.
The laws in U.S. states were established to maintain "racial purity" and white supremacy.
Such laws were passed in South Africa because of fears that the white minority would be "bred-out" by the black majority.
The Nazi ban on interracial marriage and interracial sex was enacted in September 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws, the Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre (The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour).
The Nuremberg Laws classified Jews as a race, and forbade marriage and extramarital sexual relations between persons of Jewish origin and persons of "German or related blood".
Such intercourse was condemned as Rassenschande (lit. "race-disgrace") and could be punished by imprisonment (usually followed by deportation to a concentration camp) and even by death.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in South Africa, enacted in 1949, banned intermarriage between different racial groups, including between whites and non-whites.
The Immorality Act, enacted in 1950, also made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race.
Both laws were repealed in 1985. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Miscegenation.html
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/
Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions NPR June 11, 2007
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/
1967
Movies > Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.nytimes.com/1967/12/12/
U.S. Supreme Court ruling
Loving v. Virginia
388 U.S. 1 Loving v. Virginia (No. 395)
Argued: April 10, 1967
Decided: June 12, 1967
206 Va. 924, 147 S.E.2d 78, reversed.
Syllabus
Virginia's statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications held to violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1
Amendment XIV Section 1
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866.
Ratified July 9, 1868.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/18/
On March 18, 1966, LIFE magazine published a feature under the quietly chilling headline, “The Crime of Being Married.”
The article, illustrated with photographs by LIFE’s Grey Villet, told the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a married interracial couple battling Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws.
Villet’s warm, intimate pictures revealed a close-knit family, including children and grandparents, living their lives in opposition to a patently unjust law — but also captured eloquent moments, gestures and expressions that affirmed just how heavily their defiance weighed on the very private couple. http://life.time.com/history/richard-and-mildred-loving-grey-villet-photos-1966/?iid=lf|mostpop#1
The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet JANUARY 20–MAY 6, 2012
Forty-five years ago, sixteen states still prohibited interracial marriage.
Then, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, a white man, and his wife, Mildred Loving, a woman of African American and Native American descent, who had been arrested for miscegenation nine years earlier in Virginia.
The Lovings were not active in the Civil Rights movement but their tenacious legal battle to justify their marriage changed history when the Supreme Court Virginia's anti-miscegenation law —and all race-based marriage bans— unconstitutional.
LIFE magazine photographer Grey Villet's intimate images were uncovered by director Nancy Buirski during the making of The Loving Story, a documentary debuting on February 14, 2012 on HBO.
The exhibition, organized by Assistant Curator of Collections Erin Barnett, includes some 20 vintage prints loaned by the estate of Grey Villet and by the Loving family. http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/loving-story-photographs-grey-villet
The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage.
The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06loving.html
https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/the-loving-story-photographs-by-grey-villet https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/12/
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/12/
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/us/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/18/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2017/mar/29/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/05/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/
Bernard Sol Cohen 1934-2020
Bernard S. Cohen, left, and Philip J. Hirschkop, co-counsels in Loving v. Virginia.
The Supreme Court’s landmark unanimous ruling in that case in 1967 struck down bans on interracial marriage.
Photograph: Francis Miller (1905-1973) The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
Bernard Cohen, Lawyer in Landmark Mixed-Marriage Case, Dies at 86 With Philip J. Hirschkop, he brought Loving v. Virginia to the Supreme Court, which struck down laws against interracial marriages. NYT Oct. 15, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
With Philip J. Hirschkop, (Bernard Sol Cohen) brought Loving v. Virginia to the Supreme Court, which struck down laws against interracial marriages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/
1960s
miscegenation laws
ban in many US states against interracial marriage
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/07/
Sammy Davis Jr. 1925-1990
RatPac Press & Running Press (The Perseus Books Group)
Rat Pack's Sammy Davis Jr. Lives On Through Daughter's Stories NPR May 08, 2014
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/08/
Sammy Davis Jr. 1925-1990
born Samuel George Davis, Jr.
In his own words, Sammy Davis, Jr. was "the only black, Puerto Rican, one-eyed, Jewish entertainer in the world."
His daughter, Tracey Davis, shares memories and details of his life in her new book, Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father.
It's based on conversations Davis had with her father as he battled throat cancer near the end of his life.
He described his start in vaudeville at 3 years old where he was billed as an adult midget.
"He didn't have the traditional family life," Davis tells NPR's Celeste Headlee.
"He was always working, working, working, and trying to become famous."
She says that even after making it, "he was scared that it could be taken away at any minute."
Sammy Davis Jr. was frank about the racial prejudice that he suffered both during his army service and his time in show business.
It also shadowed his family life.
He married Swede May Britt Wilkens in 1960 — a time when interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 states.
They both converted to Judaism.
As his daughter grew up, she remembers "there [were] times that a swastika was painted somewhere or the N-word was written on a car."
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/08/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/08/
In 1924, the Virginia legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which outlawed interracial marriage, in part by reclassifying American Indians as “colored.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/
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