National Loving Day could not have come at a better time this year. With the nation fatigued by a global pandemic and suffering from the effects of racial injustice, our country needs a time to heal. National Loving Day, celebrated each June 12, commemorates the anniversary of the landmark 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia. In that case, the Court struck down Virginia statutes that criminalized and otherwise prevented marriages between persons solely on the basis of race. The Court held:
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 the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (Case citations omitted).
In Loving v. Virginia, Virginia residents Mildred Jeter and Richard P. Loving were legally married in the District of Columbia. Shortly after returning to Virginia, the Lovings were charged with violating the state’s ban on interracial marriage. The couple pleaded guilty, and their jail sentence was suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. The Lovings filed an action in the District of Columbia to vacate the judgment. Eventually, the case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, whose decision recognized the fundamental right to marry regardless of race. The Loving decision became instrumental in another landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the same right to marry as every other couple and recognized the validity of those marriages already existing.
Loving Day began initially as a graduate thesis project at Parsons School of Design in New York City after its founder, he himself a person of interracial and intercultural heritage, accidentally discovered the Loving case. Loving Day has since expanded into a global network of Loving Day celebrations seeking to fight racial prejudice through education, build a multicultural community, and promote multicultural awareness. So on this National Loving Day 2020, let’s keep that mission alive and learn to respect and love one another.
