How Loving v. Virginia Legalized Interracial Marriage in the U.S.

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law banning interracial marriage. In the process, it invalidated similar laws in 15 other states. Here’s how it happened: On June 2, 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter traveled from their home state of Virginia to Washington, D.C., to be married. They returned to Virginia as husband and wife. On an early July morning, police broke into the couple’s bedroom and arrested them for violating a Virginia state ban on marriage between a “white” person and a “colored” person. Richard was white, and Mildred was Black and Native American. The state defined “white” as someone with, quote, “no other admixture of blood other than white and American Indian” and defined “colored” as someone, quote, “in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood.” The Lovings went to court for a hearing, and they pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to leave Virginia and not return as a married couple for 25 years. Richard and Mildred moved to Washington, D.C., and from there they challenged the Virginia anti-miscegenation law. Though a state court rejected their challenge, the Lovings’ case made its way to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals—which ruled that the statute could stand as it applied “equally” to both Black and white people. In 1967, almost a decade after the Lovings’ arrest, the U.S. Supreme Court finally heard oral arguments for their case. The resulting decision was unanimous. The Lovings’ conviction was reversed, and the Court affirmed the freedom to marry as “‘one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Virginia’s statute was stricken down, as were similar racist laws across the country. Richard and Mildred’s marriage was now legal in every state—and all other American interracial couples, no matter what state they were in, now had the freedom to be married or to have their marriage recognized in states where it had been illegal.