Just 45 years ago, 16 states deemed marriages between two people of different races illegal.
But in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.
The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.
Twenty images show the tenderness and family support enjoyed by Mildred and Richard and their three children, Peggy, Sidney and Donald.
The children, unaware of the struggles their parents face, are captured by Villet as blissfully happy as they play in the fields near their Virginia home or share secrets with their parents on the couch.
Their parents, caught sharing a kiss on their front porch, appear more worry-stricken.
And it is no wonder - eight years prior, the pair had married in the District of Columbia to evade the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which banned any white person marrying any non-white person.
But when they returned to Virginia, police stormed into their room in the middle of the night and they were arrested.
The pair were found guilty of miscegenation in 1959 and were each sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years if they left Virginia.
They moved back to the District of Columbia, where they began the long legal battle to erase their criminal records - and justify their relationship.
Following vocal support from the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches, the Lovings won the fight - with the Supreme Court branding Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional in 1967.
It wrote in its decision: ‘Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.
‘To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.’ [Read more]
Dr. King preaching at White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina.
February 16, 1960
The Herald-Sun via Endangered Durham
also, durham was ranked #1 most tolerant city in america! http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/01/16/the-u-s-s-most-tolerant-cities-photos.html
(but it’s not enough. it’s never enough. there are still huge inequalities in this country.)
‘Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls’: When Satire Meets Reality [#Feminist Friday]
As I went through my habitual morning routine of checking all of my social media hubs for today’s links in social commentary, I came upon the latest response video to the hugely popular “Shit Girls Say,” Franchesca Ramsey’s ( a.k.a. Chescaleigh’) “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls.”
The two minute video finds Franchesca, a young Black woman wearing a blonde wig in character as a White girl, in various locations talking to the camera, saying things that White girls have been known to say to Black girls.
I watched the clip, laughed, as I recognized in it many familiar comments I’ve had directed at me, and proceeded to post it to my Tumblr blog, to share it with my followers. Ten minutes after I posted the video, it had already received over 300 notes and continued to grow. The comments ranged from: ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this” to “Genius!” to “This is my life.”
Is it a surprise that the video would strike a chord with so many people? Not if you are indeed a Black girl. If you’re a Black girl, you’ve undoubtedly heard (or at the very least heard of) the “Shit” said in the video plenty of times before. You probably laughed and nodded knowingly while watching the clip, thinking to yourself “yeah, definitely been there.”
The fact is that heinous as they may be, ignorant and racist commentary can serve to create a collective experience for POC. Our skin colors, varied as they may be, come with a certain shared sense of knowing when it comes to marginalization. Not all of us are in possession of the critical tools needed to recognize, name or fight the offending commentary, but whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we all experience it, be it slightly or blatantly.
It’s this shared sense of knowledge that allows us to watch a satirical video like “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls,” recognize our lives in it and laugh, while still acknowledging the sad truth that the reason a video like this even exists is because we live in a society in which White girls don’t acknowledge (or choose not to, in some cases) the offensive nature of what they perceive to be harmless descriptors such as “ghetto,” which the blonde Franchesca uses in the video. It is the same society in which White people have to actually be told that no, they can’t touch your hair and no, they can’t wear blackface, not even on Halloween. The very same society in which: “You can say the “N” word, but I can’t? How is that OK?”—as asked by Franchesca’s White girl character— is an actual question asked genuinely by many White people with no understanding of the significance of co-opting language for their own purposes.
The video’s success lies in its central focus on the “othering” nature of White girls’ commentary when it comes to Black girls. When White is society’s default setting, the rest of us are always an “other.” “Ghetto” becomes a synonym for undesirable, and all language—even hurtful words, laden with historically negative significance—becomes fair game. While “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls” may seem like a simple comedic video to give us all a good chuckle in an “LOL White People” meme kind of way, it also serves—as does all good satire—as scathing commentary on privilege and its ties to language. Satire at its best is both educational and comical; an often tough balance to master, and when you have the volatile issues of racism and marginalization to tackle, the task becomes ever more difficult. In this case, while we’re all laughing, maybe some of Franchesca’s viewers should be taking notes because the video could just as easily have been titled “Shit White Girls Should Never Say to Black Girls.”
- Fatima (@F_Garda)
favorite part:
The fact is that heinous as they may be, ignorant and racist commentary can serve to create a collective experience for POC. Our skin colors, varied as they may be, come with a certain shared sense of knowing when it comes to marginalization. Not all of us are in possession of the critical tools needed to recognize, name or fight the offending commentary, but whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we all experience it, be it slightly or blatantly.
It’s this shared sense of knowledge that allows us to watch a satirical video like “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls,” recognize our lives in it and laugh, while still acknowledging the sad truth that the reason a video like this even exists is because we live in a society in which White girls don’t acknowledge (or choose not to, in some cases) the offensive nature of what they perceive to be harmless descriptors such as “ghetto,” which the blonde Franchesca uses in the video. It is the same society in which White people have to actually be told that no, they can’t touch your hair and no, they can’t wear blackface, not even on Halloween. The very same society in which: “You can say the “N” word, but I can’t? How is that OK?”—as asked by Franchesca’s White girl character— is an actual question asked genuinely by many White people with no understanding of the significance of co-opting language for their own purposes.
and yes, even as a mixed woman this happens to me (perhaps moreso because they don’t see my ‘black side’).
