Love story

The Love Story that Changed America
Find out how a couple in love brought forward the landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, which forever changed the color of marriage in the United States.

UPDATED: JUNE 9, 2023 | ORIGINAL: FEBRUARY 17, 2017

copy page link

Richard and Mildred Loving in Washington, DC.
BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES
“What are you doing in bed with this woman?” Sheriff R Garnett Brooks asked as he shone his flashlight on a couple in bed. It was 2 a.m. on July 11, 1958, and the couple in question, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, had been married for five weeks. “I’m his wife,” Mildred responded. The sheriff, who was acting on an anonymous tip, didn’t relent with his questioning. Richard was of Irish and English descent, and Mildred of African American and Native American descent, and according to state law, it was a crime for them to be married. They were arrested for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act.

Richard spent a night in jail before being released on a $1,000 bond his sister procured. Mildred, however, was not allowed a bond. She spent three nights alone in the small woman’s cell that only fit one. When she was finally released, it was to her father’s care. After the couple pled guilty, the presiding judge, Leon M. Bazile, gave them a choice, leave Virginia for 25 years or go to prison. They left and would spend the next nine years in exile.

This is a modal window.Something went wrong while setting up a Google DAI stream.
Loving v. Virginia

The Lovings first met when Mildred was 11 and Richard was 17. He was a family friend, but their dating courtship didn’t begin until years later. Growing up about three or four miles apart, they were raised in a relatively mixed community that saw themselves as a family, regardless of race. Often coming together over music and drag racing, it was not uncommon for people of different races to intermingle, work together and sometimes date. Mildred’s mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She later identified herself as Indian.

Richard and Mildred dated on and off for a couple of years before they decided to get married after Mildred became pregnant. (Mildred already had a first child from another relationship.) The Lovings traveled to Washington, D.C. to marry, where interracial marriage was legal, and it was the nation’s capital that they would later return to when they were forced to leave their home.