Normally my “holiday” posts are fun little ditties about celebrating pickles or something equally silly.\u00a0 Today is a little different.\u00a0 Today is Loving day.<\/p>\n
This isn’t about loving your neighbor- as much as we all should do that!\u00a0 Today is about a young couple in love named Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving.\u00a0 They fell in love and decided to get married.\u00a0 However, there was one small problem.\u00a0 They lived in Virginia in 1958.\u00a0 Mildred was black and Richard was white.\u00a0 It was illegal for them to marry!\u00a0 They married in a state where it was legal and then went back home, but even THAT was illegal under Virginia law!\u00a0 Soon after they wed they were both sent to prison for the crime of marrying the person they loved.\u00a0 At their trial they were given the option to leave the state instead of going back to jail.\u00a0 They moved to the Washington DC area but continued to experience racism along with the knowledge that if they ever went back to Virginia they would be jailed.<\/p>\n
Eventually their plight reached the Supreme Court and the court ruled that laws prohibiting marriages between races were unconstitutional.\u00a0 Mildred and Richard were finally able to return home.\u00a0 They had three children and remained married until 1975 when Richard was killed in a car accident.<\/p>\n
As some of you know, I dated a couple of guys of different ethnicities in my early 30s, one for over a year and a half.\u00a0 While there are a laundry list of reasons why it didn’t work out, race wasn’t one of them.\u00a0 I experienced shocking racism in restaurants simply for having dinner with someone who didn’t look like me and it made me sick.\u00a0Love is love and should be celebrated, not judged.\u00a0 I can’t imagine the courage Mildred and Richard had to live and love as they did and their story needs to be celebrated and remembered by everyone.<\/p>\n
Photo by\u00a0Tamara Menzi<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Normally my “holiday” posts are fun little ditties about celebrating pickles or something equally silly.\u00a0 Today is a little different.\u00a0 Today is Loving day. This isn’t about loving your neighbor- as much as we all should do that!\u00a0 Today is about a young couple in love named Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving.\u00a0 They fell in love and decided to get… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues","category-its-all-love"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t