Mildred Loving, the Black woman who made history with her white husband by challenging Virginia's interracial-marriage ban, died May 2. She was 68. To commemorate her life, we are running one of DiversityInc.com's most popular stories--a story on interracial marriage and Loving's legacy--which originally ran on the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision that resulted from her challenge.

Forty years ago today, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and a white man named Richard Loving made history. They had married in 1958 in Washington, D.C., which allowed interracial marriage, but when they returned home to segregated Virginia, they were arrested, jailed and thrown out of the state for 25 years because they had violated Virginia's Racial Integrity Act. After numerous appeals, the case went up to the Supreme Court, which, on June 12, 1967, overturned miscegenation laws in Virginia and several other states.

What has happened to the Lovings and to life in the United States for interracial couples? The Lovings returned to Virginia, had three children, and lived quietly, shying away from media attention. Richard Loving died in a car crash in 1975. Mildred Loving still lives in Virgina and recently told The Associated Press in a rare interview that "[Richard] used to take care of me. He was my support, he was my rock."

To this day, she said she sees June 12 as "just another day. Sometimes I forget."

The Lovings broke the barrier; interracial marriages and biracial children have become commonplace in the United States. For more on growing up with one white parent and one black parent, read "Being Biracial: A Personal Account" in the May issue of DiversityInc magazine.

Today, about 4 percent of the married couples in the United States are interracial--about 2.3 million marriages, the Census Bureau reports in its most recent data (March 2006).

Of the interracial marriages, the census found that the largest amount, 23 percent, consist of a white husband and an Asian wife. Next most popular was a black husband and a white wife, 12.5 percent. Asian husbands and white wives were 7.6 percent, while white husbands and black wives were 5.1 percent. For more pairings, go to www.census.gov.

Census 2000 was the first year that Americans could check multiple race boxes to describe their heritage. This was the first time since 1641 that this type of ancestral expression was legal and federally documented, as laws prohibiting sex or marriage across racial lines date back to colonial times.

What was the result of this federal inclusion? In 2001, the Census Bureau released its first demographical report that included multiple races. The March 12, 2001, report stated that 2.4 percent of the U.S. population or 6.8 million people responded by checking more than one race box.

This came after two decades of work between the Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA) and the Census Bureau. AMEA has worked with the Office of Management and Budget and the Census Bureau since the late '80s on including multiracial people in census data.

The trial judge who suspended the Lovings' 1959 prison sentence on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return traced his definitions of race back to God. "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," said the judge, according to the ruling found on the AMEA web site, www.ameasite.org. "The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Mildred Loving sees it just a bit differently. On the court's decision to allow her to legally wed her husband, she told the AP, "It wasn't my doing. It was God's work."

 
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