40 years ago, interracial couple broke the color barrier [View All]

[maddezmom]

The Lovings union changed the face of America


Richard P. Loving and his wife, Mildred, two years before a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowed them to return to Virginia.
AP file


By DIONNE WALKER
Associated Press

MILFORD, VA. — Reporters no longer beat a path to the modest white house just over the Caroline County border — and that's fine with its owner, a soft-spoken 67-year-old who never wanted the fame her marriage brought her.

Born Mildred Jeter, she's known by the name she took when she — a black woman living in segregated Virginia — dared break the rules by marrying a white man named Richard Loving.

The union landed the Lovings in jail, then before the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally in the history books; 40 years ago Tuesday, the court ruled in favor of the couple, overturning laws prohibiting interracial unions and changing the face of America.

Mildred Loving hardly considers herself a hero — just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

more:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4877907.html