Forty years ago, I’d be writing to you from jail. My wife, too.
We’d probably lose our jobs. We probably wouldn’t be allowed back in the state, if we made it out alive. I’m not sure what would have happened to our kids.
That was just 40 years ago.
Why?
We fell in love. We got married. We had kids.
"Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Mala, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."
That is what Caroline County (Va.) Circuit Court Judge Leon Bazile said in 1958 when he suspended the sentence of Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter as long as the couple left the state. They weren’t allowed to return - together - for a quarter-century. Mr. Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, were married in Washington, D.C. and returned to Virginia where they were arrested while in bed just hours after they returned.
They sued.
The case, Loving vs. Virginia, reached the Supreme Court. In 1967, the court struck down miscegenation laws in Virginia and 15 other Southern states.
Monday, June 12, was Loving Day, a day a man by the name of Ken Tanabe wants to turn into a national Loving Day. He’s created a Web site related to multi-ethnic Americans.
There are more than 3 million interracial families in this country today, according to the 2000 census. That’s more than quadruple the number in 1970.
I don’t like being a stat, but it’s inevitable. What I do know is that I love my wife and my kids. And I’m glad we can be together, in large measure thanks to the Lovings.
We didn’t have a big grand celebration. We do our own little celebration each time someone tells us how beautiful our daughters are and how happy we look. Thankfully, we experience that every day.
Comments 5
And a wonderful couple and family you are! That old judge was just a tad arrogant to think he could know what God intended!! “His ways are not our ways” and “who can know the mind of God” are both verses from the Bible!!
Posted 15 Jun 2006 at 6:03 am ¶That is an amazing story, one I did not know. Thanks. I remember having lunch on the beach in FT.Lauderdale thinking “these two are madly in love”. You guys make the world the world a better place.
Posted 16 Jun 2006 at 7:28 am ¶I was unaware of this story as well. I sent it to my mother and stepfather, who is a Puerto Rican man whose skin is pretty close in tone to Herb’s.
The law may have changed forty years ago, but they still get dirty looks when they go into some restaurants in their tiny coastal town about five hours from here.
My aunt, a lesbian, still gets some dirty looks when she goes to dinner with her girlfriend in Greensboro. They also tell her stories like this have nothing whatever to do with her relationship.
Posted 16 Jun 2006 at 8:27 am ¶Beautiful, man.
Posted 16 Jun 2006 at 3:36 pm ¶I never knew this story either, very cool.
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 6:08 pm ¶All I can say is it’s all about love and happines and treating each other well and taking care of one another, I mean that’s the bottom line right??? SO how can anyone say that a family of people who do all this, but happen to have different skin tones, can be wrong??? It’s just crazy, it makes no sense!! That is just not what its all about.