Vegas Sculptor’s Blog

One of the pioneers of the civil rights movement died last week. Mildred Loving, born Mildred Jeter, died at her home in rural Milford, Virginia. She was 68.

The name is probably not familiar to you. She wasn’t one of the people you saw on the news every night. According to the Associated Press, “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.”

Like many in the movement she did something that today, thanks to her, would not even be noticed. She married her childhood sweetheart.

What made her story important was the fact that she was black and her husband, Richard Loving, was white. In 1958, the year they married, interracial marriage was against the law in Virginia and many other states. They traveled to Washington D.C. where they were able to obtain a marriage license, married, then returned to Virginia to live.

According to the L.A. Times, “But in Caroline County word spread to the commonwealth’s attorney, the equivalent of a district attorney, that the two had married. He obtained a warrant for their arrests. One July night, the Lovings woke up about 2 a.m. to the see the sheriff and deputies surrounding their bed, shining flashlights and demanding to know who Mildred Loving was.”

“Loving explained: ‘I’m his wife.’ Richard Loving rushed to show the men their marriage certificate. The sheriff was not moved. ‘That’s no good here,’ he said.”

“‘They told us to get up, get dressed. I couldn’t believe they were taking us to jail,’ Loving said.”

“The Lovings were indicted by a county grand jury and pleaded guilty to violating the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, another version of the state’s anti-miscegenation law. Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced the couple to a year in jail but suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state and not return together during that time.”

The couple moved to Washington D.C. and lived there until, in 1963, she wrote to Robert F. Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, and asked for his help. The Justice Department referred the couple to the American Civil Liberties Union, where attorney Bernard Cohen and later Philip J. Hirschkop took on the case.

“On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that Virginia’s laws were aimed at white supremacy, were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment.”

“Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion that marriage is ‘one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as racial classification embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive all the state’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.’”

The couple returned to live in Virginia, and sadly Richard was killed in a car accident in 1975. Mildred never remarried.

This story brought up many issues in my mind. For one thing it shows the difference one person can make. One person, taking a stand, in the face of overwhelming odds, can change the course of history. Yet today we see vicious attacks against anyone who dares voice an opinion regarding topics ranging from religion to race, from war to same sex marriage.

I also wondered about the issue of marriage. Having been married twice, I wondered how difficult mixed race marriage is. My first wife was from a very different background than I, and I believe these differences contributed to the failure of the marriage. When you consider the different racial backgrounds coupled with the disapproval of a large segment of society, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be strong enough to survive.

I also wondered how very different this story would have been had it happened today. What reads as a classic love story where “love conquers all”, would have a very different outcome today.

Today Richard Loving would have been thrown in jail for being a child predator! You see, Mildred was 11 and Richard was 17 when they started dating. Back then people didn’t have the opinion that young people were incapable of making decisions about who they loved. Back then the idea of “childhood sweethearts” was not a dirty thing. Back then people had bigger fish to fry!

How do you feel about this? Were the Lovings heros? Because of the difficulties involved would you advise young couples against mixed race marriage? Was Richard a pervert for getting involved with an 11 year old? Do you think that as a society we need more adherence to the law no matter what, or more dissent against laws that we consider unfair?

On several occasions I’ve mentioned how strange I find it that within the last couple of generations we’ve gone from a society where women were frequently married by the time they were 15 to a society that makes criminals out of any male having sex with a female under the age of 18.

The latest case of this comes from Texas where a Mormon polygamist sect has been raided by the state and all children removed from their homes.

OK, as a society we frown on polygamy. As a general rule it seems we frown on Mormonism, but we only talk about that when one wants to run for president! So a Mormon polygamist must be dealt with, and the sooner the better.

The government, under the guise of protecting children, goes in and removes the children from their homes and places them in foster homes with strangers. There have been no reports of abuse against the children that I have seen. They all lived in their parents homes. Yet now they have been placed in the foster home system. A system where we hear of abuse almost daily.

The mothers of these children appear to have done nothing wrong. The children appear to have done nothing wrong. If the state felt they needed protecting, why didn’t they take the men out of the homes? The men are the ones accused of marrying underage girls and having sex with them.

Compare this with another article I read concerning two parents from the Denver, Colorado area.

This couple wasn’t married. They had a son when they were both 15. Recently the father, Joseph Manzanares, went to the video store where his ex-girlfriend, the babies mother, worked. They began to argue, he threatened to kill her, and knocked over several displays and a computer.

The cause of all this ruckus? “The mother of the child told police that she and the boy’s father have been involved in ongoing domestic disputes regarding their son.”

“The woman said she is a `Crip’ gang member and that Manzanares is a `Baller’ gang member, and `they have different ideas on how the baby should be raised,’ said Commerce City Police Sgt. Joe Sandoval.”

“`Basically she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would claim,’ Sandoval said.”

Now pardon me if I seem stupid here, but if you are already planning your child’s life of crime, shouldn’t you have the child taken away? And what about the fact that the mother of this child was only 15 when the child was born?

On the one hand we have a group of people who are raised in a society that believes that polygamy is OK and marriage at 15 is OK so we attack them and take their children away. On the other hand we have a couple that doesn’t give a damn about marriage, children, or crime and we only arrest one of them when he goes in and busts up someone’s business!

Does this seem as screwed up to you as it does to me? Do you think the Mormon girls are being abused by following the tradition of the society they were raised in? Do you think the Colorado child is being abused by having parents who fight over which gang he will be in rather than what school he should attend to escape the life his parents have apparently had?

Is the polygamist case discrimination against a religious belief we don’t agree with? Would the Colorado child be helped if he weren’t Hispanic?