Valentine’s Day: Richard and Mildred Loving, the powerful love story that changed America

When Richard Yes Mildred they got married, they didn’t want to make it “a political statement or fight”.

Simply They were in love.

They had to travel to Washington to get married because authorities in Virginia – where they both grew up, fell in love and wanted to start a family – they were forbidden to marry.

It was the year 1958.

“You see, I am a woman of color Yes Richard was white and at the time people believed it was okay to keep us from getting married because of their ideas about who should marry whom, ”Mildred wrote several years later.

When they returned to Virginia, they had no intention of defying the law, they were “happily married”.

But everything changed one morning

“It was like 2 am. I saw the light [de una linterna] and when I woke up, the policeman was on the side of the bed. He told us to stop ”, Mildred said.

The sheriffWith two assistants, she asked Richard who she was. “My wife”, replied.

Although the marriage certificate hangs on the wall, both they were arrested “for the” crime “of marrying the wrong kind of person”, Mildred said.

It is the love story that had a huge impact on American society and law and which BBC Mundo remembers in the Valentine’s Day.

Mildred Jeter, who was from black and indigenous roots, she had met Richard Loving in Virginia when they were both children. He was six years older than her.

Despite the fact that in the 1950s, racial segregation it intensified in the southern United States, in the rural capital where blacks and whites lived, worked and shared freely.

The two families were friends, but their children’s romance developed when interracial marriages were banned in that state.

Therefore, after being arrested in their room in 1959, they were sentenced to one year in prison.

However, a judge suspended the sentence on the condition that they did not return together or at the same time to the state for 25 years.

Los loving They had no choice but to agree and pleaded guilty to violating that state’s racial integrity law.

In ruling on his ban, the judge referred not only to local law, but to what many Southerners saw as “God’s will”.

“Almighty God created the white, black, yellow, malay and red races and placed them on separate continents. If there was no interference with this arrangement, there would be no reason for such marriages. [interraciales]. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend to mix ”

The couple returned to Washington, even though they did not feel happy there and wanted to return to where they were born, near his family.

In 1963, to get help, Mildred decided to write to then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who forwarded the letter to one of the major civil rights groups.

The letter would arrive in good hands.

“I was a young lawyer and I practiced in private law. He was also a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ”he told her. Bernard cohen to the journalist Simon Watts, in the program of Witness for the BBC.

In his early twenties, he was assigned the case due to his knowledge of Virginia law.

“I felt very strongly that the case was perfect to prove the unconstitutionality of the statutes of Virginia ”, Indian.

“I was thrilled to get involved, even though, frankly, I had only practiced this profession two or three years since I left law school.

When Cohen met the lovers, he was impressed not only by their simplicity Yes shynessbut also by his last name.

“I thought that the name was fortuitous. How could anyone resist the story of their love for each other? It was a very good omen ”.

As an adjective, in English, magnet it means magnet The lover of something and it is also the continuous form of the verb like: magnet.

Cohen recalled that “they had their feet on the ground. They were unpretentious people. They weren’t liberal agitators or anything like that. They were just ordinary people. “

Richard Loving was a mason. My partner Philip Hirschkop, who eventually came to work on the case with me, used to laugh and say that Loving was the epitome of the Southern Province. In fact, she had a very fair complexion and red sunburn mark around the neck“, counted.

“He was a man of few words, with a very soft voice, and Mildred was the one who spoke the most when we first met.”

Although Cohen was excited about the case, he knew that a long legal battle was looming, which surprised the couple.

“What was unusual was Mr. and Mrs. Loving’s naivety as to the seriousness of the legal case they were about to become involved in,” Cohen recalls.

“Mr. Loving suggested that I go to the judge to see if I could ask him change one’s mind five years after being found guilty.

“When I explained to him that it was just not possible and that this case, in my opinion, was going to go as far as Supreme Court of the United StatesRichard’s jaw dropped and shook his head. I could hardly believe what I was saying. “

It was a complicated legal battle called: Love against Virginia.

Watts explains that the two lawyers stumbled upon an obscure 1860s law that allowed them to challenge Virginia’s initial decision and take it to the Supreme Court as a test case.

“I was pretty nervous. I know that I left a puddle of sweat on the lectern in which I stood while presenting the argument to the judges. But since then I’ve listened to tapes of my argument and I think I did better than I remember, ”Cohen said.

So that was it. With a clear voice and a lot of determination, in his historic intervention the lawyer said:

“The state ignores a very important point which will never be overestimated, namely Richard and Mildred Loving have the right to wake up in the morning or fall asleep at night knowing that the Sheriff will not knock on their door or make their faces shine in the privacy of their bedroom. “

“The Magnets have the right to fall asleep at night knowing that if they did not wake up in the morning, their children would have the right to inherit from them without a will.”

“They have the right to security to know that if they fall asleep and do not wake up in the morning, one of them, the survivor, is entitled to the Social assurance. All of this is denied to them.

And the verdict came with a “Great jubilation.”

“We were satisfied with the result. It was a nine to zero decision in our favor. We immediately called the Loving and told them we won. “We won, we won! And they said, “What does that mean? And we told them that meant they could live freely in Virginia and would not be convicted of any crime ”, Cohen recalled.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States gave Richard and Mildred the “right” to be “Husband and wife, father and mother”, in Virginia.

But what happened on June 12, 1967 was historic not only for the Loving but for the rest of the country: the Supreme Court struck down the ban on interracial marriage in Virginia and many other states across the country.

The then President of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, called the laws against interracial marriage as “unbearable for a free people ”.

Cohen, who died in October, has always been proud of his role in legalizing interracial marriage in the United States.

“I feel like this decision has put the nail in the coffin of racial profiling in America. It was a momentous case because not only did it touch on important legal issues, but it was deeply emotional, ”the lawyer told Watts.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t feel racist but who were strongly opposed to interracial marriage and it took a long time to see the effects sociological of the decision [del caso] Love has made its way into the minds of most Americans.

“Today, most Americans he is not opposed to interracial marriages ”.

When they returned to their state, Love lived in the house Richard had built for his wife.

They had three children: Donald, Peggy and Sidney.

Richard died in a car accident in 1975, Mildred died of pneumonia in 2008.

A year earlier, when the 40th anniversary of the historic judgment, Mildred released a statement, of which we extract a few:

“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been very clear and correct. Most believed that what the judge said was God’s plan to keep people apart and that the government should discriminate against lovers.

But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The fears and prejudices of the older generation have diminished and today’s youth are realizing that if someone loves someone, they have the right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think about Richard and our love, our right to marry and what that meant to me. the freedom to marry the person who was precious to me, even though others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” to marry me.

I believe that all Americans, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, should have the same freedom to marry. The government does not have to impose the religious beliefs of some people on others. Especially if he denies people’s civil rights.

I’m still not a political person, but I’m proud that Richard’s name and mine are in a court case that can help strengthen the love, commitment, justice and family that so many white people have. or black, young or old, gay or straight. look in life.

I support the freedom to marry for everyone. This is what it means to love and to love ”.

BBC Mundo