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An interracial couple married in Washington DC with the intentions of returning to their home state, Virginia, which strictly banned interracial marriages and did not allow any colored person to live with a white person as husband and wife. Mildred Jeter, who was black, and her husband Richard Loving, who was white, decided to return to their home state in Virginia in 1958. In October they were charged with unlawful cohabitation and where immediately sent to jail. In the courts eyes they violated the Virginia code 20-59 which stated: "Leaving State to evade law. -- If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in § 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage."(“Loving ET UX v. Virginia”) The couple was sentence to a year...
The movie, Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols is based on a true story about Richard, and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple fighting for their rights to stay married, and be able to raise their family in the state of Virginia where in the 1950’s it was illegal to be married to a race other than your own. Richard Loving grew up in a small town called Caroline County in the state of Virginia, where he met Mildred and knew that he would do anything to be able to call Mildred his wife. Richard proposed to Mildred on an estate of land he bought for them to raise a family on one day. Mildred agrees to marry him, but unfortunately, they are aware that in the state of Virginia it is illegal for them to get married because of their anti-miscegenation law. They agree that they will go to Washington, D.C., where they will be able to become legally married. In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving became legally married in Washington, D.C. When they return home to the State of Virginia they are harassed by the Caroline County police and thrown into jail because they got married outside of the state that they reside in, which is illegal in Virginia. Richard is set out on bail, but Mildred is forced to stay in jail for several more days. Richard and Mildred’s case was presented before a judge to decide the ramifications of their actions.
In the Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) is the landmark ruling that nullified anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. In June 1958, Mildred Loving, a black female, married Richard Loving, a white male, in Washington, DC. The couple traveled to Central Point, Virginia and their home was raided by the local police. The police charged the Loving’s of interracial marriage, a felony charge under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code which prohibited interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the couple pled guilty and received a suspended sentence with the agreement that they would Virginia and not return for 25 years. In November 6, 1963, the couple filed a motion in the state court to vacate the original judgment on the grounds it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Loving V. Virginia is a notable case where two citizens of Virginia, a 17 year old African American female named Mildred Jeter, married a 23 year old white man named Richard Loving in Washington, DC in June 1958. During this time the District of Columbia did not have any laws prohibiting interracial marriages where as Virginia, the state the two currently resided in did. Not long after their marriage the newlyweds returned to Virginia and were served an indictment by the Circuit Court of Caroline County in October 1958. The indictment stated that the two were violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws against interracial marriage. Thus the Lovings had to plead guilty to the charges in January 1959 (Warren, 1967).
According to americanhistory.si.edu there was a law in Nebraska in 1911 that stated “Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.” Laws like these were harsh on African Americans and this law was passed as Jim Crow Laws were coming to an end. These weren’t just laws to the people of that time, they were a way of life. The Jim Crow Laws undermined multiple amendments and through the Unite States into turmoil and riots.
Rindfuss RR, VandenHeuvel A. 1990. Cohabitation: a precursor to marriage or an alternative to being single? Pop. Dev. Rev. 16:703 26
Blacks and Whites first began mixing significantly in America in the 17th and 18th centuries, between African slaves and the European indentured servants. Fearing that these interracial relationships would tarnish the purity of the White race, states passed laws in the 1660s to prohibit interracial marriage. Despite these strict anti miscegenation laws, the relationships continued, sometimes through consent and other times through force, as White slave owners often raped their Black female slaves. As a result, many multiracial children were born as the circumstance of bru...
This societal acceptance has made it easier for couples to live together without being married. Many of these men and women decide to live together because they consider the cohabitation a "trial marriage." They fe...
"-- we are all complicit and we all carry a certain responsibility for America's original sin: racism." -- David Bedrick, The Huffington Post, 10 April 2015
Slavery has existed in one form or another for centuries and in some places in the world it still exists today. In most places slavery is a way of life and there is nothing that can be done about it, and in southern America that was the case too for over three hundred years. During that period many people fought against slavery and tried to get it abolished from the country, but little did they know how long and how brutal the fight would be. Even after slavery was abolished by the thirteenth amendment in 1865, the African American and some European people suffered even harder times than they did during the years of slavery. After slavery was abolished a few years later the Jim Crow laws were introduced in the south, making it nearly impossible for African Americans to live a free life, and these laws would eventually shape the race relations in the south for several years to come. The Jim Crow laws made African Americans second class citizens to the white people of the south. Even though slavery was abolished in the south, these laws made sure that African Americans were not able to enjoy their new found freedom. These laws were implemented by white community to make sure that they kept the power that they once had over the African Americans, because they were afraid of what might happen if they gain power. The white people in the south were successful in doing so for almost eighty years.
Anti-miscegenation regulations and laws existed long before the United States became a nation. The colony of Maryland passed the first anti-miscegenation law in 1664. This law prohibited the mixing of different racial groups through marriages and sexual relations. For instance, to discourage Caucasian women from being involved with African-American or African males, one law “required [that a] white woman who married a male slave, [had] to serve the master for the lifetime of her slave husband” (Robinson 3-4). After Maryland enacted its first anti-miscegenation law, colonies like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Delaware and Georgia took the initiative to enact laws that would prohibit unions between Caucasians and other races.
On July 11, 1958 a couple of hours after midnight, Richard Loving a white man and Mildred Loving an African American woman were awakened to the presence of three officers in their bedroom. One of the three officers demanded from Richard to identify the woman next to him. Mildred, full of fear, told the officers that she was his wife, while Richard pointed to the marriage license on the wall. The couple was then charged and later found guilty in violation of the state's anti-miscegenation statute.
In her work, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America, Rachel Hope Cleves addresses the possibility that, based on their letters, poetry, and diaries, Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant’s relationship went further than friendship and co-workers. Instead, she proposes that Charity and Sylvia might have engaged in a romantic same-sex relationship which equaled that of any other marriage in their community. Cleves argues that these women may have been in a romantic relationship by examining the language used in their letters, diaries and poems in comparison to popular poetry of the time and language used between heterosexual couples in romantic relationships. However, even Cleves admits that there are aspects to Drake and Bryant’s relationship which leave their relationship status permanently and purposely ambiguous. With some letters lost and others destroyed, there will always be questions about the exact
The ruling of Baehr vs. Lewin was a victory for gay rights activists, hope for other states searching for the same freedom, and disappointment for opponents of same-sex marriage. Yet this victory was short lived (until complete legalization in November 13, 2013) since the state appealed the lower court’s decis...
... if? The legal consequences of marriage and the legal needs of lesbian and gay male couples. Michigan Law review. Nov.1996. Pg. 447-491. http://www.jstor.org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/stable/1290119?seq=1&uid=3739664&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103079482127
The story took place almost 40 years ago, but it seems interracial marriage is still difficult in US, especially between Black and white.