Sunday, June 12, 2011

Loving Day

Mildred and Richard LovingIn 1958 a Virginia couple were rousted from their bed in the middle of the night by a county sheriff, arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime of miscegenation, for which they were sentenced to a year in jail. With the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, they appealed the conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, which on June 12, 1967 ruled unanimously that the Virginia law against inter-racial marriage violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution and overturned the convictions.

Richard Loving died in 1975 at the age of 41, when a drunk driver hit their car; Mildred died in 2008 at the age of 68.

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