Black History month Mildred Loving

Lydia

Mildred Delores Jeter, Birth

Mildred Loving was born July 22, 1939

She was born in Central Point Virginia

She was of African-American and Native American descent

Her mother was part Rappahannock Indian and her father was part Cherokee

Marriage life

She was just 11 years old and attending an all-black school when she first met Richard Loving, a 17-year-old high school student. Quietly, the two eventually started dating and, when Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18, the two decided to get married.

They were married for a couple of weeks when the sheriff barged in their house from a tip saying that they had an illegal marriage.

Richard Loving spent a night in jail The couple was ordered to leave the state and not return

together for 25 years. They paid their court fees; relocated to Washington, D.C.;

had three children

Fight for a right!

The shy, somewhat soft-spoken Mildred became a reluctant activist in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s when she and her husband, Richard Loving, successfully challenged Virginia's ban on interracial marriage.

But by 1963, the Loving's decided they'd had enough Mildred wrote Attorney General Robert Kennedy to ask for his

assistance.

Kennedy wrote back and referred the Lovings to the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.),

On June 12, 1967, the high court agreed, unanimously coming down in favor of the Lovings, striking down Virginia's law and allowing and the couple to return home to Virginia

Mildred Loving made blacks and whites to have a legal marriage