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            ARLINGTON, VA --- It started simply as a common love story: boy and girl met, fell in love, then got married.  But 40 years ago, there was something not so common about this love story: the boy is white, and the girl is black.

            Little did Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, dream that their love story would stir up a seismic challenge to the miscegenation convention of the times, and cause the highest court of the land to make a landmark decision upholding the couple’s constitutional right to marry across racial lines.

            At this 40^th anniversary year of the celebrated Loving v Virginia Supreme Court civil rights case, which was handed down on June 12, 1967, this writer googled some background information, some of which are reproduced  for this Asian Fortune article.

            According to records, the young couple, original residents of Virginia, got married in June 1958 in Washington, D.C., whose pursuant laws allowed interracial marriage, then went back to live in Virginia.  They established their new home in Caroline County, one of the now 47 districts of the Commonwealth.

            On October of that same year, the couple was charged and indicted by the Circuit Court of Caroline County for violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages.  Pleading guilty of the charge, the Lovings were sentenced three months later on January 6, 1959 to one year in jail.

            However, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on condition that the Lovings leave the Commonwealth State of Virginia for a period of 25 years, and not return together as a married couple, for 25 years.

            Politically incorrect – [to say the very least] – this may be in present times, the trial judge ruled with these remarks:  

            "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay [sic] and red, and he [sic] 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 Circuit Court of Caroline County then convicted the Lovings for violating Statute 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which states:

            "Leaving State to evade law. -- If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in Statute 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage."

            Section 20-59, which defines the penalty for miscegenation, and which the Lovings were also convicted for violation, provides:

            "Punishment for marriage. -- If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five.”     

            After their convictions, the Lovings went back to live in D.C. On Nov. 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to have the sentence nullified on the ground “that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment.”

            The United States Supreme Court picked up the case, and consequently, on June 12, 1967, ruled in favor of the “LOVING ET UX v. VIRGINIA” case, stating that the Virginia court had violated the Fourteenth Amendment with its ruling on the Lovings.

            Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the Court’s opinion.

            He wrote: “This case present a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.  For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment...

            “The Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.

            “There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race…

            “These convictions must be reversed.”

            To which Justice Potter Stewart concurred: “I have previously expressed the belief that ‘it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor.’ Because I adhere to that belief, I concur in the judgment of the Court.”

            The other members of the Warren Court that ruled on this historic case were Associate Justices Hugo Black, William Douglas, Tom Clark, William Brennan, Byron White, and A. Porter.

APAs Initiate Celebratory Lunch

            Little known or celebrated despite its historic significance not only along the lines of civil rights but also of human rights, the Loving case made surprising visibility, albeit meager, in the greater metropolitan DC area when a small group of celebrants gathered for a celebratory dinner on June 12, 2007 held at the Minh Vietnamese restaurant on Wilson Blvd, Arlington.

            Organized by Eric Byler, filmmaker son of an interracial couple – his father, Tony Byler, Caucasian, and mother Donna Byler, Asian of Chinese ancestry – the modest party drew mostly members of ethnic media from black, Hispanic and Asian communities and a group of friends, including Dan Choi, Annabel Park, Dewita Soeharjono,Julianne Hanckel, and Lawrence Koggwa.

            A newly wed couple replicating the Lovings example also came: Richard Stagnato, who is white, and his wife, Catrina, who is black.  They too reside in D.C.

            “I got the idea of organizing this celebratory occasion when I learned from college friends in New York City that they celebrate Loving Day,” Eric Byler said, “So since Virginia is the place where it started, it would be great to start the celebration here too.”

            His mother joined in with the information that according to a publicized survey, two-thirds of people interviewed said they would consider marrying someone outside of their own race.

            Recalling their own wedding some 27 years ago, Tony said that he did not remember much because he and Donna had only “eyes and ears for each other the entire time.”

            But Eric, on an analytical not, turned to observations and insights learned from the significance of the Loving civil rights case, focusing on the dynamic of how social acceptability of certain attitudes inevitably help shape or change public policy.

            “To what degree does the social acceptability of prejudice allow, say gays, to be targeted, and to what degree does the choice to target a [certain] community actually gives birth to a social acceptance of prejudice?

            “If we’re talking about Afro Americans the way that gays and lesbians, or Muslims, Arabs and Mexicans are spoken of today and in everyday discourse, it would be totally unacceptable.  Right?

            “But because this communities are chosen as targets, we sort of go along with the idea that it is socially acceptable to target them. By allowing these prejudices to be socially acceptable because we see [or hear] it every day, we begin to accept it as part of the national discourse.”

Loving Facts to Know

            A fact sheet given at the party includes the following information:

            - Loving Day is about fighting prejudice through education and building a sense of community among people who engage in meaningful interracial and intercultural relationships.

            -  It is celebrated by many people across the United States and in countries around the world; it is not a federal holiday (not yet?) but shared among friends and family, and passed down among generations

            -  Laws against interracial marriage predated slavery, and lasted longer than segregation.

            -  35 states outlawed interracial relationships at tone time during their history, including marriage, living together, etc.

            - It was not just “black and white”; laws against interracial marriage affected people of African, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, South Asian, and European descent.

            -  The last state law against interracial marriage was removed from the books in Alabama in 2000, which showed that despite the Supreme Court law after the Loving decision, the issue still exists.

            Proof however that the Loving decision may have made an impact of demographic significance is the fact that the 2000 Census, which had started a category that allows an individual to identify himself or herself by two or more races, has yielded, according the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 5.6 million or 1.9 percent of the U.S. total population of 302 million-plus.

            It would be worth noting what the figures would be by 2010, the next decennial count.