On July 11, 1958 at 2:00 AM, a County Sheriff
entered the home of Virginia couple Richard and Mildred
Loving, forced them out of their bed,
and placed them under arrest.
Their crime, interracial marriage.
This is the story of "Loving versus Virginia,"
and the landmark civil rights decision that
would set an important precedent for marriage rights in America.
Richard, who was white, and Mildred,
who was black and Native American,
spent the early morning hours of July 11 in jail.
They were tried and found guilty of violating
Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924,
a series of laws that made race mixing illegal.
The Lovings were then given an ultimatum--
spend one year in prison, or leave the state of Virginia
for 25 years.
Frightened and unaware of their legal options,
they moved to Washington, DC, where their marriage was legal.
They raised their three children in the nation's
capital, financially strapped and isolated
from friends and family.
Five years later they returned to Virginia
to visit moldered relatives, but were arrested for a second time
for traveling together.
Inspired by the burgeoning civil rights movement,
Mildred decided to fight back.
So in 1963, she wrote a letter to US
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, asking for his advice.
Kennedy referred the Lovings to the American Civil Liberties
Union, who assigned their case to two
young lawyers named Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop.
Cohen and Hirschkop took their appeal all the way
to the Supreme Court, arguing that Virginia's
anti-miscegenation laws violated the equal protection
clause of the 14th Amendment-- which
guaranteed African-Americans citizenship and all
its privileges.
The broad sweeping language of the amendment, they argued,
make no mention of interracial marriage,
and thus guaranteed equal protection of a human being's
right to marry.
Attorneys from the state of Virginia
argued that the state's rights should be
prioritized over federal laws.
But the argument didn't hold up.
On June 12, 1967 the Court unanimously
struck down the Virginia marriage ban,
and overturned the Lovings' conviction.
The court ruling reverberated across America,
invalidating anti-miscegenation laws
not only in Virginia, but in 16 other states
that held them as well.
After winning their case, the Lovings
were finally free to do what they wanted to do all along--
they lived quietly in Virginia as husband and wife
until Richard's death in 1975.
"Loving versus Virginia" would inspire gay marriage
advocates during their own Supreme Court victories,
decades later.
For example, 2003's "Lawrence versus Texas"
decision ruled that a Texas statute criminalizing
sexual activity between members of the same-sex
was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court would directly cite "Loving"
in two subsequent landmark cases that pave
the way for same-sex marriage.
The first was 2013's "United States versus
Windsor," which struck down a key part
of the Defense of Marriage Act.
And the second was "Obergefell versus Hodges," a 2015 ruling
which granted same-sex couples around the nation
the right to marry.
Few cases are so appropriately named
as "Loving versus Virginia," a case about one
couple's brave fight to validate their love
in the eyes of the law.
"Loving versus Virginia" forever redefined
marriage in the United States.
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