Finding a Way Home

Richard Loving went out of Virginia to marry Mildred Jeter as laws in their own state forbid people of different races from marrying. When the couple returned home, they were arrested for leaving the state to marry and then returning to live in the state. Marrying a person of a different race was a felony with a sentence of five years in prison. The Lovings were taken to trial where the judge sentenced them each to a year in prison, but he paroled them by requiring the couple to leave the state and requiring them to not return for twenty-five years, not even to visit family and friends. Mildred was encouraged to speak to the US Attorney General about this case, and, with his help, the case went to the US Supreme Court where state laws against mixed marriages were declared invalid.

It's shocking to me to realize that all of this took place not hundreds of years ago, but within by lifetime.

Finding a Way Home looks closely at the details of this case as it advanced through the courts, and then takes a look at same-sex marriage cases that later used the Loving case as a precedent.