Mildred Loving, plaintiff in famous Supreme Court case, dies

Loving and her white husband Richard sued the state of Virginia after they were denied recognition of their Washington, D.C. marriage. Virginia was one of at least 17 states that outlawed interracial marriage in the 1960s.

In June 1958, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were lawfully married in the District of Columbia. Shortly after their marriage, they returned to Virginia, where a local grand jury issued an indictment charging the couple with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages.

On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail, but the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the state and not return to Virginia together for 25 years.

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents," the judge wrote in his opinion. "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 for the races to mix," the judge wrote.

The Lovings appealed and took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in 1967 that Virginia's law, called an antimiscegenation statute, was unconstitutional. In the famous case, Loving v. Virginia, the court ruled: "There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause."

In reversing the convictions, the Court ruled that "the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." The opinion was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, an appointee of President Dwight Eisenhower, who had also led the Court in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival," wrote Warren. "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

Mildred Loving reportedly died Friday at her home in Milford. Her husband died in 1975.