Loving v. Virginia

Today, I had the pleasure of seeing the newly released film, Loving. The compelling film is based on the real story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the interracial couple whose Supreme Court case eventually rendered anti-miscegenation laws across the country unconstitutional. I researched the true story of the couple after watching the movie and was relieved to know that there were no embellishments written into the film interpretation of the story. The fact this movie stuck to the couple’s history spoke volumes to me as it made a statement that there is no need to dramatize film scripts to depict instances of civil rights struggles.

The Loving story reminded me that many who effected beneficial reform and civil liberties for us today had no intentions of being civil rights heroes. Only five weeks after Mildred and Richard made the long trip from their hometown of Virginia to Washington D.C. to get married, they were taken from their home and hauled to jail. At their first court date, the judge offered them two equally detestable punishments: a year in jail or to leave their home state of Virginia for twenty-five years.  Many civil rights cases like the Loving’s merely came about due to the many Jim Crow laws that continued to diminish the humanity of black people as well as spaces for them to embrace their identities with whomever they chose to love. 

Another interesting aspect of the movie was the pushback that Richard (Mildred’s white husband) received. Richard’s character was a man of few words, most of his scenes in the movie consisted of him vowing to protect his wife, expressing disdain for the couple’s constant media attention, and scenes where he didn’t speak at all, but admired his wife with the bright smile that only she could elicit from him. Richard never questioned his devotion to Mildred, but many questioned his decision to stay married to her. Her family was hurt that he had put Mildred under such scrutiny by the police, and his friends and co-workers were annoyed that he had given up his white privilege and freedoms to marry her. Richard disliked the constant media attention and incessant court hearings because, to him, their marriage was much simpler than all the red tape that came with their interracial union. He even refused to go to the Supreme Court hearing, expressing to Robert Kennedy that he only wanted one message relayed, “Tell the judge I love my wife.” The plight of racial prejudice was surreal to Robert until the moment the couple was hauled off to jail in the middle of the night by police only to be told that the marriage license over their bed ‘didn’t mean nothing’ in Virginia.

After losing their case on the county level, Mildred was advised to contact attorney Robert Kennedy who, alongside the American Civil Liberties Union, eventually took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Following their victory, it became clear to Richard and Mildred that despite their original intentions to fight for their love and life in their hometown, they paved the way for the rights of all interracial marriages after theirs.