David Aaronovitch, Times Online (UK)
- In America in the spring of this year, 2008, a widow named Mildred Dolores Loving died at the age of 67. Let me hand the story over to the late Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, writing in 1967.
“In June 1958,” Warren explained, “two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws.” But not pursuant to the laws of their native Virginia. When they returned to the state and set up home in Caroline County, a Virginia grand jury indicted them for violating the local ban on interracial marriages.
“On January 6, 1959,” Warren continued, “the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that: ‘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’.”
