"Richard and Mildred Loving were an interracial couple who married in 1958. They married in Washington, D.C., because Virginia, where they lived, had an antimiscegenation law that prohibited interracial marriages. When they moved back to Virginia they were prosecuted and convicted for violating the law and sentenced to one year in jail. The state offered to suspend the sentence if they promised to leave the state. They moved back to Washington, D.C., and filed a suit challenging the Virginia law. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled the law unconstitutional. The decision invalidated similar laws in fifteen other states." Civil Liberties in America by Samuel Walker, 2004.
Grey Villet, [Richard and Mildred Loving with their children Peggy, Donald, and Sidney in their living room, King and Queen County, Virginia], 1965.
Image courtesy "The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet" exhibit
Tell the court I love my wife race, marriage, and law: an American history by 
