Loving, 50 Years Later

June 12, 2017 9:56 AM

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court decision that invalidated state laws restricting interracial marriage. Recently, we asked readers to share their experiences about being in a mixed-race relationship. We received more than 2,000 stories in just a few days. Some wrote about the resistance they faced from family and society, while others celebrated the particular richness of their lives. Here are some of those stories.
posted by cynical pinnacle (20 comments total)

This is really beautiful.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:04 AM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Coincidentally, 50 years ago last Friday, my dad shocked his more conservative jewish relatives by marrying a shiksa (ie: non jewish woman, ieie: my mom).
Years later, one of his aunts confessed that they'd decided she must have been pregnant, and, on not seeing any baby born within 9 months of the wedding, that they'd had it in secret and sent it off to be raised in the country.
Our sister-who-lives-in-the-country is a recurring family injoke memento to this particular form of short-sightedness.
posted by signal at 10:12 AM on June 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

You never know what your family will do until you're there. It's a hell of a thing to hear a dear older relative, a lifelong (white) liberal and a kind person, urge you privately not to date a person of [ethnic group] because "their men are cruel to women." The only dudes who have been cruel to me had cleft chins and blond hair. That too is a matter of chance, of course, but I'm not going to mistake pure Orientalism for relationship advice.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:28 AM on June 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

As a person in an interracial relationship, this day is pretty special to me. I also think it's hella cool that the plaintiffs' name was "Loving".
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:28 AM on June 12, 2017 [16 favorites]

Yeah, that's the most perfectly-named Supreme Court case ever.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:44 AM on June 12, 2017 [9 favorites]

Just flipping through the photos has me tearing up in my office. As a white woman married to a black woman, I am so so grateful to the Lovings and all the folks around them who drove the case to the Supreme Court and won, so that we could be.
posted by joycehealy at 10:47 AM on June 12, 2017 [13 favorites]

I'm reading this in a diner in the Bronx, and as I glance around the dining room, I see several interracial couples having lunch and nobody seems bothered by it, which is progress, that we can thank folks like the Lovings and the people in the linked article for.

Now, back to my French Dip.
posted by jonmc at 10:53 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Before Loving v. Virginia, there was Naim v. Naim in Norfolk to challenge the state's race laws

(The article claims the Warren court wouldn't hear it due to their recent decision to desegregate schools and reluctance to push for civil rights too hard)
posted by indubitable at 10:56 AM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Loving.
Naim.
Jealous.

Surely there's something going on here. But I'm damned if I can see what it is.
posted by Naberius at 11:03 AM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've been half of an interracial marriage for a little over 11 years, and we celebrate Loving Day every year. My parents were always fine with it (though that's mostly because my wife is Asian, whereas they would have had a fit if she were Black); it's her family that tried repeatedly to stop the wedding and end the relationship because I am white (after a few years, things started to change, but it was rocky at first).

My interracial marriage is also something I regularly cite to others as one of the reasons I support LGBTQ+ marriage equality (and other equal rights) when talking with people who don't believe in equal rights on LGBTQ+ issues. These days, people are usually fine with interracial marriage, and if they can see how much the arguments against one resemble (and are sometimes identical to) the arguments against the other, it can be a useful way of getting them to reconsider their prejudice.

In other words, my interracial marriage is intersectional.
posted by mystyk at 11:23 AM on June 12, 2017 [13 favorites]

Before Loving v. Virginia, there was Naim v. Naim in Norfolk to challenge the state's race laws

This is my hometown! We're a rather old city by US standards (founded 1680s), so we've been around for all of America's ugly history. So, naturally, we've got a lot of really ugly history of our own-my high school is missing a graduating class of 1959 as they refused to desegregate-, but then we also have a history of people standing up to the ugliness.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:31 AM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm a bit of a mess today. My mixed-race relationship has been going strong for 18 years and counting. Today, it's also been a year since this happened. I'm not sure I can stop the tears flowing.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 11:33 AM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Miscegenation" by Natasha Trethewey is my favorite poem by her; I try to re-read it each Loving anniversary.
posted by nicebookrack at 12:24 PM on June 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I knew Roe in Roe v Wade was a made-up name to protect the plaintiff. I always assumed Loving was, too. Ya learn something new, etc.
posted by greermahoney at 12:50 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nice article by DeNeen L. Brown in the Post: Before Loving v. Virginia, another interracial couple fought in court for their marriage

Eighty-four years before Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter traveled from their home in Virginia to wed in Washington, there was another interracial couple who made the same trip for the sake of love.

On Nov. 4, 1874, the day interracial marriages became legal in the nation’s capital, Andrew Kinney, a black man, and Mahala Miller, a white woman, left their home in Augusta County, Va., where they lived with their two sons, traveled to the District and married.

They spent 10 days on their honeymoon before returning home to Augusta County, Va., where they lived as husband and wife.

Then, in 1877, they were arrested and charged with “lewd and lascivious cohabitation” and violating Virginia’s law banning interracial marriage. On Feb. 2, 1878, they were found guilty of miscegenation and fined $500 each.

Substitute "gender" for "race" and the following sounds like a contemporary same-sex marriage hater:

Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Christian wrote that marriage, “the most elementary and useful of all” social relations, must be regulated and controlled by the state.

“The purity of public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of our cherished southern civilization, under which two distinct races are to work out and accomplish the destiny to which the Almighty has assigned them on this continent,” Christian wrote, “require that they should be kept distinct and separate, and that connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them, should be prohibited by positive law, and be subject to no evasion.”

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:09 PM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's the most perfectly-named Supreme Court case ever.

One of the landmark cases for obscenity laws in the United States was Swearingen v. US.

My great-great-grandparents (German-American and Chinese) were married in 1917 in New York City, one of the few states that never had anti-miscegenation laws. Of course, my great-great-grandmother lost her US citizenship due to this marriage thanks to the Expatriation Act of 1907, something that continued after the Cable Act was passed in 1922 since she had married an Asian (Asians were not considered "racially eligible" for US citizenship).

Geez, it's amazing how much certain elements of American society have always cared who you get married to. It's like a bizarre US sickness. Maybe I have too modern or progressive an outlook, but who the hell cares who you marry?!?!?!
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:12 AM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've had a few interracial relationships. And honestly the last thing on my mind when we met was race. I may have thought about it later but the initial, mutual attraction was so powerful and consuming the sociology was mute. On reflection, interracial may be the salvation of the human race.
posted by judson at 7:26 AM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

The word "interracial" never used to make me uncomfortable. But then a friend who was married to a Thai woman used the phrase "an interracial couple" in a conversation. None of the couples in the room were matched sets of any kind of ethnic origin, so I stopped and politely asked "wait, what do you mean when you use that word?"

He closed his eyes, realising what he'd done, and admitted that he only used it to refer to a couple with one white partner and one black one.

So yeah, that is one hell of a word to me, now.

But here's a toast to Loving! 🍾
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 9:28 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Loving Day means so much to me. ♥ Thank you for posting this kind reminder.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 10:12 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've had a few interracial relationships. And honestly the last thing on my mind when we met was race. I may have thought about it later but the initial, mutual attraction was so powerful and consuming the sociology was mute.

Same experience (though I dislike the word "interracial" because it implies the existence of categories I reject, and it's taken on transgressive connotations). But yeah, not thinking about race.

These couples are gorgeous.

This was an interesting read for me because in the somewhat likely event I marry someone not "white," there's going to be some weirdness from a certain percentage of the relatives. I perceive a noticeable - maybe unconscious - preference from some people for me dating a white girl. Nothing like overt racism - which they know I'd push back very hard against - but something subtle, and bad. So.
posted by iffthen at 11:24 PM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]