Today is the 40th anniversary of the charmingly named Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court verdict that struck down state laws against interracial marriage. The case involved Richard and Mildred Loving, who married in 1958 in Washington, DC, where their marriage was legal, but then moved to Virginia, where interracial unions were a crime punishable by up to a year in jail. They were convicted, but spared jail and instead banished from Virginia for 25 years by trial judge Leon Bazile. Yes, banished. How medieval. The ACLU and the NAACP took up the case and pushed it to the Supreme Court, where a unanimous decision struck down the Virginia law and the laws of 16 other states still clinging to state-sanctioned discrimination (although South Carolina and Alabama held on to their unenforceable laws until just a few years ago).
In some ways it’s hard to believe that within my lifetime, such marriages were illegal in many states. In other ways, it’s not hard to believe at all.
It’s not hard to believe that a judge could use the Bible to justify discrimination, as in Judge Bazile’s infamous quote:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. 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. Read the rest of this entry »
I got a life to lead 