It was on this day in 1967 that the United States Supreme Court decided a case that made it possible for folks like the Spousal Unit and I to get married. Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a black woman married in 1958. Unfortunately at that time there were states that still had anti-miscegnation laws on the books that made that simple act a crime. You can look up the story of their lives to get the historical background needless to say as someone who has been involved in an interracial relationship since the early 1990’s, the story of the Lovings is one I have come to know.
I rarely write about my marriage and the fact that I am married interracially on this blog since after all these years, I simply see the Spousal Unit as a man who happens to be my husband and yeah he’s white. There is also the fact though I have been pretty intentional in stating that should we ever for any reason part company I most likely would never date interracially again. Yeah, I know that sounds bad and yes the Spousal Unit is aware of my feelings lucky for him, I have no intentions to unload him anytime soon.
However folks like myself do have a debt to the Lovings because if I thought it was hard to be married to my first husband in 1991 who was white, I can only imagine how hard it had to be back the late 1950’s. Even now there are still moments of the uncomfortable pause when folks realize we are married. Of course I will never forget when my first husband and I were married and I was pregnant with the elder boy and we were out at the old Grant Park in Chicago and a white woman came up to my then husband looked at me with disgust and said to my then husband “What white woman did you so bad….” you can fill in the blanks.
We have come a long way baby! Yet we have so much further to go when it comes to marriage equality in this country but that’s another post.
HappyLoving Day!
How far this country has come, and how far it has to go…
How nice that their name was Loving! I’m going to remember the date; not too many holidays that I really feel like celebrating, but this is a good one.
My dad just recently passed. After my parents divorced he married a White woman. This was in 1955. I never thought much about their union because we are family and our relationship is solidly grounded in love.
When one of my sibs spoke about our dad he mentioned their defiance of the law of the land at that particular time. Up until then it hadn’t even ran across my mind. Ain’t love grand and oh so powerful!
I’m a white guy married to a black woman in the UK.
We’ve had more adverse comments from black people than from white, but that may be because white people are less likely to voice it now, black people will just say it out loud!
There are still far more BM/WF couples than WM/BF around. Its ‘getting better’ but there is still a pressure on black girls to go with black guys that there isn’t on black guys to go with black girls.
Having watched American TV programmes all my life, I was under the impression that there was no mixed race relationships in the USA at all. I was pleasantly surprised when I visited NYC/LI in 2007 to find out there are actually white and black people who love each other and kissing and holding hands in public too!
Who Knew??? 🙂