It may be hard for younger readers to believe, but it wasn't all that long ago that marriage between black and white Americans was forbidden by law in many states.
Fifty years ago, to be precise. Fifty years ago today.
That's when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down it's landmark ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which declared that states had no right to bar interracial marriage.
Mildred and Richard Loving, seen in the photo above, were married in 1958. She was black, he was white. Although they lived in Virginia, it was against the law for them to marry there so they went across the border into the nation's capital, which had no such law.
Back in Virginia a month later, police raided their home and arrested the couple. Interracial marriage was a felony and they each faced one-to-five years in prison.
At trial they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, suspended, on the condition they leave the state for at least 25 years. After a few years of sneaking back into Virginia to visit family the Lovings decided enough was enough. In 1964, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, they challenged Virginia's law. After losing in lower court, the Loving's attorneys appealed to the nation's highest court. Sixteen states still had laws against interracial marriage on the morning of June 12, 1967. After the court announced its decision that day all such laws were declared unconstitutional. The court was unanimous in its opinion that "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
Interracial marriage has become more common and more accepted in our society, but there are still those who object to such unions. But thankfully such opinions are no longer the law in this land where one of our most fundamental values is that all citizens are considered equal.