RIP Mildred Loving

[silverscreenselect]

One of the defendants in the famous 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, which overturned laws banning interracial marriage. Loving and her white husband Richard married in Washington DC in 1958 when she was 18 and were arrested when they moved back to Richmond a few weeks later. They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave the state of Virginia, but a few years later, at the urging of Robert Kennedy, they filed suit to have the law overturned, which the Supreme Court did in a unanimous decision.

It might be noted that the Lovings' friendship began when she was 11 and Richard was 17, although it's not clear when their relationship became intimate. Their story was made into a TV movie a few years ago starring Timothy Hutton as Richard and Ruby Dee as Mildred's mother.

Husband Richard died in an auto accident in 1975. Mildred was age 68 when she died.