From an article by Dionne Walker, AP, posted earlier today:


Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on  
interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking  
down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural  
Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble  
— and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when  
the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck  
down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely  
because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the  
equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned  
publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last  
June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

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

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting,  
according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in  
the 2004 book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers."

She became pregnant a few years later, she and Loving got married in  
Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Mildred told the AP she didn't  
realize it was illegal.

"I think my husband knew," Mildred said. "I think he thought (if) we  
were married, they couldn't bother us."

But they were arrested a few weeks after they returned to Central  
Point, their hometown in rural Caroline County north of Richmond.  
They pleaded guilty to charges of "cohabiting as man and wife,  
against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to  
their indictments.

They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave Virginia — the only home  
they'd known — for 25 years. They moved to Washington for several  
years, then launched a legal challenge by writing to Attorney General  
Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil  
Liberties Union. . . .

[You can read the rest of the article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ 
20080505/ap_on_re_us/obit_loving]


--Jurretta Heckscher


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