The Loving's

The bottom is a case that I recall studying in a sociology class I had.

In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were married in Washington, D.C. Six months after having been married, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in jail. Their crime? Richard was white. Mildred was black.
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."
The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C. (where they lived for 8 years) and appealed their conviction on the grounds that Virginia law (The Racial Integrity Law of 1924) violated their rights to equal protection of the law and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Their case went through many levels of the justice system and their appeal was denied every time. On June 12, 1967, their case appeared before the United States Supreme Court. The Court decided unanimously (9-0) to strike down Virginia's laws, as well as statutes in 17 other states that still forbade interracial marriages. Finally, after nine years of struggle, the Lovings won the right to live together as husband and wife in their home state. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry a person of another race resides within the individual and cannot be infringed on by the State. These convictions must be reversed. It is so ordered."

Mildred Loving is alone now-- The marriage that entered her name in law school textbooks ended in 1975 when a drunken driver broadsided the couple's car and killed her husband. She lives quietly in the small cinderblock house Loving built for her and three children after the Supreme Court decision allowed them to return to Virginia "MIXED AND MATCHED. Mildred and Richard Loving didn't want to overturn Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, they just wanted to get married."