Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down similar laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Milford, Va.
The Loving vs. Virginia decision overturned legal and social prohibitions against miscegenation in the U.S.
The modest homemaker never thought she had done anything extraordinary. “It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said a year ago. “It was God’s work.”
According to the Census Bureau, there are 4.3 million interracial couples in the nation.
In 1958, 17-year-old Mil dred Jeter and Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in the District of Columbia. She was pregnant with the first of their three children.
When they returned to Central Point, Va., someone called the law. They were charged with unlawful cohabitation and given a suspended sentence on condition they leave the state.
They moved to Washington, D.C., where eventually they filed a legal challenge that led to the Supreme Court ruling.