Loving vs. Virginia
Page 11
I wiped my hands on a rag,
draped it around her,
both of us laughing soft.
We rocked for a moment.
There, I said.
We’ll build the house there—
pretty close to where I caught
your home run ball.
She looked at me funny.
Bean, don’t you remember?
I was there with your brothers,
caught your fly ball coming through
the apple tree, there.
You was mad as a hornet—
thought you was going to kill me.
I could tell she was working hard to remember.
She said, Yep, I think I do remember.
Can’t tell if she really did.
Don’t matter.
I smiled and said,
Couldn’t have done this without you.
She laughed at that.
I laughed.
She said,
This whole
thing brought us closer together,
I think.
Do you?
Yeah, I think so.
MILDRED
I’d like to forget a lot
about the last nine years.
All, but what is precious to me—
my family—
our kids growing up
with their daddy
and me.
I take off my shoes
and feel the grass
soft underfoot.
I don’t mind the sticks and the pebbles.
I just feel the give of the soil
and the cool of the grass.
I follow my children through the trees
to the creek.
Sidney has waded in,
already fallen.
I think he did that on purpose.
Don is laughing at him,
so Sidney pulls him in too.
They’re laughing so hard
no one needs pushing.
They can’t even stand back up.
Peggy is scooping for tadpoles,
just like Garnet and I did
as kids.
I spot blackberries at the edge of the wood
and eat a few.
I show my children.
They pick some,
load their pockets.
Sidney points out a sparrow
and a nest
filled with hungry babies.
Next weekend my brothers and Garnet
will come by
and some neighbor folk—
maybe.
It will be Father’s Day.
Mama will boil a chicken or two.
I’ll cook up some cabbage.
Maybe Mama will make a pie.
We’ll all sit around the table,
join hands,
and thank God.
RICHARD PERRY LOVING (1933–1975)
MILDRED DELORES JETER LOVING (1939–2008)
After nine years of exile, Richard built the family a house where they lived happily for eight years. In 1975, Richard and Mildred were driving home from the Bowling Green carnival on Sparta Road, when they were hit by a car driven by a drunk driver. Mildred was blinded in one eye and Richard was killed. Ray Green, driving behind them, saw it happen. Mildred lived out the rest of her life surrounded by family and friends in the house Richard built on Passing Road, Caroline County, Virginia. She died of pneumonia in 2008 at the age of sixty-eight.
In her obituary in the Washington Post (May 6, 2008), Mildred is quoted as having said,
“We each loved each other and got married.
We are not marrying the state.
The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants.”
LOVING VS. VIRGINIA TIME LINE
DECEMBER 6, 1865—13th Amendment ratified into U.S. Constitution—slavery is abolished
JULY 9, 1868—14th Amendment ratified into U.S. Constitution
1896—Plessy v Ferguson—separate but equal idea becomes the law of the land
1924—Racial Integrity Act of Virginia enacted
1954—Brown v Board of Education—U.S. Supreme Court rules that all schools must desegregate
FEBRUARY 25, 1956—Virginia’s “Massive Resistance” begins; county officials close schools rather than integrate
SEPTEMBER 1957—Little Rock Nine, Arkansas—nine African American students were prevented from attending Little Rock Central High School on September 4 by order of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus; the nine students were admitted September 25 by order of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
JUNE 2, 1958—Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter marry in Washington, D.C., and go home to Virginia
JULY 11, 1958—Lovings are arrested in Central Point for miscegenation
SEPTEMBER 1958—Little Rock, Arkansas—Governor Faubus closes Little Rock high schools for the year to prevent segregated attendance
JANUARY 6, 1959—Lovings tried, found guilty, and sentenced by the Caroline County Circuit Court
JANUARY 19, 1959—Virginia’s school-closing law is found to violate the State Constitution
MARCH 28, 1959—Lovings violate parole and are rearrested, but charges are dropped
FEBRUARY 1960—Sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in North Carolina sparks wave of similar protests
MAY 1961—“Freedom Riders” become active in the Deep South
APRIL 16, 1963—Martin Luther King Jr. writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
AUGUST 28, 1963—Martin Luther King Jr. leads the March on Washington
NOVEMBER 6, 1963—Bernard Cohen of the ACLU files motion to vacate judgment and set aside the sentence in the Commonwealth of Virginia v Loving and Jeter case
OCTOBER 28, 1964—When their case is still not decided, the Lovings, aided by the ACLU, file a class-action suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
JANUARY 1965—Judge Leon Bazile denies the move to vacate judgment with his famous “The Almighty God . . .” opinion
FEBRUARY 11, 1965—Three-judge district court makes decision to allow Lovings to present their claim to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
MARCH 1966—Virginia Supreme Court, headed by Judge Carrico, sustains the anti-miscegenation laws in the Lovings’ case
MAY 31, 1966—The Lovings, aided by the ACLU, appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court
DECEMBER 12, 1966—U.S. Supreme Court accepts the Loving v Virginia case
JUNE 12, 1967—U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Lovings’ convictions in unanimous decision
JUNE 1967—The Lovings return home to Passing Road, Central Point, Caroline County, Virginia
JUNE 29, 1975—Richard dies at forty-one years old after being hit by a drunk driver
MAY 2, 2008—Mildred dies of pneumonia, surrounded by her remaining family, at sixty-eight years old
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTERVIEWS
All interviews conducted by the author.
Buirsky, Nancy. Phone interview, June 15, 2012.
Coleman, Cleo(patra). Phone interview, March 6, 2013.
Coleman, Sandy. In-person interview, July 18, 2012.
Green, Raymond, with John Coleman, Buster Fortune, and fourth man. In-person interview, July 19, 2012.
Jeter, Otha. Phone interviews, July 18, 2012; February 22, 2013; May 1, 2013.
Jeter, Otha. In-person interviews, July 20, 2012; July 21, 2012.
Jeter, Lewis. Phone interviews, May 21, 2012; June 14, 2012; July 21, 2012; February 16, 2013.
Jett, David (Tappahannock Historical Society). Phone interview, March 6, 2013.
Johnson, Homer, with Jerry Chinault. In-person interview, July 19, 2012.
Lemons, Nokomis, and Wallace Lemons. Phone interview, July 20, 2012.
WRITTEN MATERIAL
American Civil Liberties Union. Feature Press Service. March 15, 1965.
Booker, Simon. “The Couple That Rocked the Courts.” Ebony, September 1967: 78–84.
Bui
rsky, Nancy, and Susie Ruth Powell. The Loving Story. DVD. Directed by Nancy Buirski. Augusta Films, The National Endowment for the Humanities, 2011.
Caroline County (Va.) Commonwealth versus Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Delores Jeter, 1958–1966. Caroline County (Va.) Reel 79. Local government records collection, Caroline County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia 23219.
Coleman, Arica L. That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia. Bloomington, IN. Indiana University Press, 2013.
Hampton, Henry, and Steve Fayer. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. New York: Bantam, 1990.
Kurland, Philip B., and Gerhard Casper, eds. Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law. Arlington, VA: University Publications of America, 1975.
LIFE. “The Crime of Being Married.” March 18, 1966: 85–91.
Nagai, Tyrone. “Multiracial Identity and the U.S. Census.” ProQuest Discovery Guides, January 2010.
Newbeck, Phyl. Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.
Margolick, David. “Mixed Marriage’s 25th Anniversary of Legality.” New York Times, June 12, 1992.
Martin, Douglas. “Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68.” New York Times, May 6, 2008.
New York Times. “Virginia Suit Scores Mixed Marriage Ban.” July 30, 1966.
The Pointer. Union High School Yearbooks. Caroline County, VA, 1952–1956, 1958–1969.
Pratt, Robert A. “Crossing the Color Line: A Historical Assessment and Personal Narrative of Loving v. Virginia.” Howard Law Journal 41 (Winter 1998): 229–45.
Ryden, Hope, and Abbot Mill. [12-mm footage of the Loving family in their home and with lawyers.] Robert Drew & Associates, 1965.
Sickels, Robert J. Race, Marriage, and the Law. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.
Wallenstein, Peter. Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
White, Jean M. “Court Overturns Virginia’s Ban on Mixed Marriages.” Washington Post, June 13, 1967.
Wingfield, Marshall. A History of Caroline County Virginia: From its Formation in 1727 to 1924. Compiled from Original Records and Authoritative Sources and Profusely Illustrated. [To which is Appended “A Discourse of Virginia” by Edward Maria Wingfield.] Richmond, VA: Trevvet Christian & Co., 1924.
IMAGE CREDITS
The author has made every attempt to locate the rights holders of all materials used in this book. If further information is available, please contact the publisher.
Page 2: [Emancipation Proclamation] Library of Congress
Page 4: [Racial Integrity Act] State Library of Virginia
Page 8: [White classroom] Photo by J. E. Schrock, courtesy of Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library
Page 9: [Black classroom] Library of Congress, Jack Delano photographer
Page 84: [Black boys] Library of Congress, Thomas J. O’Halloran photographer
Page 85: [Elizabeth Eckford] Lloyd Dinkins/Commercial Appeal/Landov
Page 147: [No Child Is Free Until All Are Free] Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; photographer unknown
Pages 162–163: [Race Mixing Is Communist] Library of Congress, John T. Bledsoe photographer
Pages 164–165: [Black boy watches demonstrators] Library of Congress, John T. Bledsoe photographer
Pages 166–167: [lunch counter] Magnum, Danny Lyon photographer
Page 169: [Freedom Riders burning bus] Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Joe Postiglione photographer
Page 183: [March on Washington] Library of Congress, Warren K. Leffler photographer
Pages 196–197: [LBJ signs Civil Rights Act] LBJ Library, Cecil Stoughton photographer
Page 201: [Cohen & Hirschkop] copyright Grey Villet Estate
TEXT CREDITS
Pages 2–3: “Long View: Negro” by Langston Hughes
Paper: “Long View: Negro” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Electronic: Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated
Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes
Pages 176 and 182: Excerpts from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs of the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent for the proprietor New York, NY. Dream: © 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
QUOTE SOURCES
Page 9: “[A] segregationist is one who conscientiously believes . . .”
George Wallace, Governor of Alabama. U.S. News and World Report, 1964.
Page 71: “Whether Virginia’s high schools, which closed on a segregated basis . . .”
Edward R. Murrow. CBS’s TV documentary “Lost Class of 1959,” January 21, 1959.
Page 84: “What good is it doing to force these situations . . .”
George Wallace, Governor of Alabama. New York Times, September 6, 1963.
Page 165: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth . . .”
George Wallace, Governor of Alabama. Inaugural Address, January 14, 1963.
Page 194: U.S. Constitution. Amendment XIV, section 1.
Page 196: Civil Rights Act of 1964, Public Law 88-352, 78 Statute 241 (1964).
Pages 210 and 212: Loving v. Virginia, 388 United States Supreme Court Reports 1 (1967).
Although the Supreme Court ruled on Loving vs. Virginia in 1967, it was many years before the remaining sixteen states that had anti-miscegenation laws struck those laws from their state constitutions.
The last anti-miscegenation law in the United States, in Alabama, was reversed in the year 2000.
FROM THE ARTIST
When I was asked to illustrate Patricia Hruby Powell’s wonderful telling of the Lovings’ story, I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to depict such an important story, and excited to reference a style of illustrative reporting from the Lovings’ time called visual journalism, pioneered by the artist Robert Weaver.
Leo Lionni, the famed illustrator and art director of Fortune magazine in the 1950s, was a driving force in the growth of visual journalism. He hired artists (including Weaver) to report on the magazine’s stories through illustration. As it developed, visual journalism was often characterized by a loose, impromptu drawing style that allowed lines to overlap and preserved the informal feeling of sketches in the final composition.
I couldn’t travel back to the days when Richard and Mildred fell in love, but I referenced Grey Villet’s photographs of the Lovings from the LIFE magazine feature, as well as photographs from my mother’s childhood in the ’50s. (There are, unfortunately, no photographs of Mildred or Richard as children.) Then, without any preliminary sketches, I drew freely with a brush pen on paper at a scale twice the size of the book. The result is a collection of honest, energetic, and fluid illustrations that reflect, I hope, both the time and the journey that Richard and Mildred experienced together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to the friends and family of Richard and Mildred Loving, who spoke to me about their early life in Caroline County—especially to Mildred’s brothers Lewis Jeter and Otha Jeter—and to Ray Green, John Coleman, Buster Fortune, and everyone who hung out around the pickup truck behind Sparta Food Mart. And to Sandy Coleman, who kindly, enthusiastically directed me there. To David Jett,
historian at Tappahannock Historical Society for all kinds of details. To Cleopatra Coleman, who told me about the one-room schoolhouses supported by the Black Baptist churches. To Nokomis and Wallace Lemons, who filled me in about the Rappahannock Nation. And to everyone who knew Mildred and Richard and encouraged me to tell the story.
Thanks to Nancy Buirski and her award-winning documentary, The Loving Story, and for directing me to Hope Ryden’s 1960s film footage of the Loving family.
Thanks to Nadine Pinede, Candy Fleming, and Sari Boren for help in guiding me through what felt like a minefield of image searching, ownership, and permissions.
To my writing group and first readers: Elaine Bearden, Jessica Denhart, Sara Latta, Kara Laughlin, Marianne Malone, Alice McGinty, Mary Jessie Parker, Ruth Siburt, and Anne Wendler—y’all saw various versions of Loving and helped me scour it clean.
Thanks to Ragdale for the time and space to work.
To Melih Sener and Chantelle Hougland for reading and understanding the poem for two. And rereading, letting me tweak, commenting, rereading again, letting me hear, and helping me shape the poem.
To my editor, Melissa Manlove, for her vision, patience, brilliance, and friendship. This book would not have been if it weren’t for Melissa. To my publisher, Ginee Seo, who suggested the book. And to the whole amazing, supportive Chronicle team, especially Jennifer Tolo Pierce, Marie Oishi, Lara Starr, Jaime Wong, Sally Kim, Taylor Norman, Binh Au, and Tera Killip.