I scream the whole heat.
I scream till I have no voice.
It feels SO good to win.
MILDRED
SIX MONTHS LATER
DECEMBER 1965
The children are in school.
I look through the grimy window
at clothes hung on the line,
the garbage lining the street.
I long for the farmhouse
or better yet—
Passing Road—
living next door to my mother and father,
just down the road
from Richard’s parents—
and ALWAYS I long for the songs of many birds
at the edge of the woods.
I long to hear Richard laugh.
It seems he hardly laughs
anymore.
Except when he’s racing.
Racing is as much part of our life
in Virginia
as the creeks
the birds
the trees.
We celebrated Daddy’s eighty-first birthday
this year.
He’s not going to live forever.
Either are Twilley or Lola.
Or Mama, for that matter.
I know all of them could use our help.
I don’t know when we’ll hear
from our lawyers.
I hardly ever bring it up with Richard.
And the night I do,
I’m right sorry I did.
He plops down on the couch,
elbows on his knees,
drops his head
into his hands.
We just want to go home.
Please, Lord,
let us go HOME.
“RACIAL INTEGRITY” AND “THE CORRUPTION OF BLOOD”
JANUARY 1965 TO MARCH 1966
After losing the case in the district court of Caroline County, Bernie Cohen and Phil Hirschkop appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, asserting that the court had erred in not upholding the Lovings’ equal protection right allowed by the 14th Amendment.
The lawyers argued that the right to marry was fundamental. If that right is restricted due to race, isn’t that an unlawful infringement of one’s liberty? What if the law stated you must marry someone of a different race? They said the state shouldn’t interfere.
The lawyers further contended that the couple’s sentence was unconstitutional.
Knowing that Virginia’s high court was a conservative body, Cohen and Hirschkop assumed they would lose the appeal. They did.
In March 1966, Virginia sustained its anti-miscegenation laws—there would be no intermarrying. In its verdict, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals referred to its decision of the decade before, Naim v. Naim, in which it ruled that it was within the powers of the state “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood.”
However, presiding Judge Harry Carrico did modify the Lovings’ sentence, saying the Lovings could return to Virginia together as long as they did not “cohabit” or sleep together overnight.
Carrico showed further compassion for the couple and “stayed” their sentence, giving them time to appeal the case to the highest court in the land.
RICHARD
THREE MONTHS LATER
MARCH 1966
After waiting another year—
more like fourteen months—
they lost that case.
Is that four now?
They called for another.
The lawyers sure are excited
for losing.
They called us into Washington
and asked us to speak
to the reporters.
They poked microphones in our faces.
The cameras were rolling.
I just wanted to be home,
but I answered
their questions.
Have you thought about other people?
Do you want to be the ones to change the law?
Why did you take this to court?
Yes, we have thought about other people
but we are not doing it
just because someone had to do it
and we wanted to be the ones . . .
We are doing it for us—
because we want to live here.
MILDRED
Shoot.
After waiting and waiting
we lose in the highest court
in the state of Virginia.
The lawyers,
they expected that.
But Judge Carrico agreed with our lawyers.
He said that our first sentence was
cruel and unusual punishment—
six years of not being able
to travel home together to see
our families.
I’m glad he sees that.
And now our case can go
to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And while our lawyers
get ready for this next part of our case—
they say our sentence is
stayed.
Which means Richard and I can return
to our farmhouse
and live together in Virginia
and no one can
arrest us.
It’s hard to believe.
Just maybe we’ll sleep
a little easier,
knowing that no sheriff
can drive up to our house,
walk right in,
and go shining lights in our eyes
in the middle of the night.
And then Mr. Cohen says
someone could make a mistake
and the sheriff might still try
to arrest us.
I’m scared of Sheriff Brooks.
You never know what he’ll do.
Anyway,
if we get arrested,
we’ll call Mr. Cohen
and he’ll get us right out.
He promises.
That’s what I understand.
Mr. Cohen says
Judge Leon Bazile has done us a real nice favor
making that racist statement.
“The Almighty God placed
the races on their own continents . . .”
Indeed!
That business made me feel
the kind of wild anger I felt
when I was a child.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Hirschkop
care that Richard and I
are tired of all this,
that we’re struggling with money,
that we’ve paid out so much for Richard’s gas money,
and he’s been gone so long each day—
but being home
will be wonderful.
Clearly, they are excited
about taking our case to the very top.
And then we go outside where the newsmen
are all gathered.
For the camera, I say,
“If we do win, we’ll be helping a lot of people.”
We pick up the kids
at my parents’ house and go to the farmhouse.
I walk out into the field with
Sidney, Don, and Peggy.
I watch them run and yell,
their voices
muffled by the wind.
A group of big black crows
stands around on the stubbly land—
until the children run at them.
The crows take off,
float on the wind.
Some try to make their way
into the wind, but the wind
won’t allow it.
The crows seem to say,
I want to go over there
but the wind says, No, I want you here.
So they let the wind carry them
real graceful on outstretched wings.
I think,
that’s like our life.
We’re those crows.
The wind is casting u
s around—
go live here,
now you can live there,
now get on over there.
You can’t control the wind.
They say we’re making progress.
FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS THE RIGHT OF THE STATE
MAY 1966
Bernie Cohen and Phil Hirschkop spent hours in law libraries researching and composing their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The two young lawyers were further advised by the National Civil Liberties Union.
More experienced lawyers were added to their team, including Mel Wulf and David Carliner, then William Zabel, Arthur Berney, and Marvin Karpatkin.
The team of lawyers’ number-one question addressed whether the Virginia courts had provided the Lovings with equal protection as is promised by the 14th Amendment.
Their second question addressed whether the Lovings were denied due process of the law; whether the state could interfere with an individual’s choice of a mate.
This was a case of freedom of the individual versus the right of the state––a huge case for such young lawyers.
Phil Hirschkop, only two years out of law school, was not yet eligible to request that a case be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court. Bernie Cohen, three years out of law school, was barely eligible to request the case, which he did. Hirschkop and Cohen filed their notice of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on May 31, 1966. On December 12 of that year, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case. This in itself was a big step, as the Supreme Court takes only one out of several hundred cases put before it.
The hearing was set for April 10, 1967.
RICHARD
ANOTHER THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
APRIL 9, 1967
Tomorrow our case gets heard in Washington.
Mr. Cohen asked us to attend.
We’re not going.
We just want to be left alone
and live our lives.
I know this is the last court.
You can’t go higher
than the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Mr. Cohen asked for a statement,
I said,
Tell the Court I love my wife
and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her
in Virginia.
While we were in the city talking
some white-hooded creeps burned a cross at Jeters’ house.
The Klan.
Once that would have screwed up my head.
Now, it feels just about normal.
I never thought my life would be like this.
We went home to the farmhouse
and I drank a beer.
And another.
And ANOTHER.
No matter how much I drank
I couldn’t get drunk.
MILDRED
Richard and Peggy
work on a puzzle together.
Richard lifts Peggy off his lap.
Without her daddy
she goes back to dressing
paper dolls with magazine cut-outs.
Richard takes a beer
from the icebox and goes outside.
The boys surround him.
Usually he’d play ball with them
or he’d get them huddled
under the hood of his car.
Instead he pats them each on the head
and walks out toward the sunset.
The court has four months
before it has to rule
on our case.
It’s a fine thing we’re
good at
waiting.
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
APRIL TO JUNE 1967
The State of Virginia, in prosecuting the Lovings, had been looking at its Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which denied the right for a white person to marry a colored person.
Cohen and Hirschkop suggested that since this 1924 legislation did allow Negroes to marry those of other races, Negroes were subject to losing their racial purity. The Act enforced only the “purity” of the white race.
That inconsistency of guarding the purity of one race but not another implied that one race was superior to another. The lawyers said this law was a “relic of slavery.” To do anything but overturn Virginia’s case against the Lovings was “fostering racial prejudice” and promoted the “myth that Negroes are innately inferior to whites.”
In his Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bernie Cohen had argued, “marriage is such a basic, fundamental, and natural right and the choice of a mate must be left to one’s own desires and conscience.” Marriage should be “beyond the arbitrary grasp of the state.”
The defendant, the State of Virginia, argued that the 14th Amendment did not cover intermarriage. North Carolina joined them, in an “amicus brief”—a statement intended to assist the court—defending the “southern way of life.”
The Lovings’ lawyers said the Lovings should be able to raise their children where they themselves had been raised, in their home state. Furthermore, the children should not have to live “under the stigma of bastardy” or illegitimacy. Upholding the Virginia laws amounted to “legalized prejudice” and relegated the Negro to second-class citizenship.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1967, consisted of eight associate justices and Chief Justice Earl Warren. After deliberating in chambers, the justices’ votes were unanimous.
ON JUNE 12, 1967,
CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN
RETURNED TO THE PODIUM
AND PROCLAIMED, SIMPLY,
“JUDGMENT REVERSED.”
MILDRED
TWO MONTHS LATER
JUNE 12, 1967
We WON.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Hirschkop are on the phone.
They ask us to come
to the press conference
at their office
in Alexandria—
right here in Virginia.
We don’t have to pretend
we live in Washington.
We can go—
TOGETHER—
to their Virginia office.
I put my hand over the phone
and ask Richard
about driving to Alexandria.
He frowns and says, “No.
It’s time they leave us alone.”
I say to Mr. Cohen,
“Thank you for everything,
but I don’t think so.”
He says,
“Mrs. Loving,
this is important.
I think it would be good
for America to hear you speak.”
I cover the phone again and say,
“Richard, Mr. Cohen thinks this is important.
We can take the kids to Garnet’s.”
He nods.
“Okay, Mr. Cohen, we’ll be there
as soon as we can.”
But it’s still a few hours away.
RICHARD
I drove fast.
Maybe so I could get it
all over with
so we could live
peacefully—
the sooner the better.
Millie was excited—
that made me happy.
At the press conference, I said,
We’re just really overjoyed.
I didn’t really expect to win.
This has been going on for nine long years.
When they asked if I had been ready to give up,
I said, I would do it again.
If we lost, I’d file another suit
in another five years.
This is what I want.
They asked,
Who do you think your children should marry?
I think I’d leave that up to them.
Let them decide for themselves.
Plans? Yes. My wife and I plan
to go ahead and build a new house now—
next to her parents’ house.
How does it feel?
It feels—
it’s hard to believe.
For the first time I can put my arm around her
and publicly call her my wife.
And that’s what I do.
MILDRED
At the press conference, I say,
“I feel free now.
It was a great burden.
Yes, I thought the Court would rule in our favor.
No, our neighbors have not been hostile.
No, we do not bear a grudge
against the State of Virginia.
Yes, the children are six, seven, and eight.
No, they’re not aware of the case.
It’s best to leave them out of it.”
Somewhere in there I start crying, but not hot angry tears.
Tears stream down my cheeks
because so much has happened.
Nine years’ worth of tears
slide down my face.
Mr. Cohen says to the newsman,
“We hope we have put to rest the last vestiges of
racial discrimination
in Virginia and all over the country.”
When the cameras are gone
I begin thanking Mr. Cohen
and to my surprise
and maybe his too
I lift my arms and hug him.
The same with Mr. Hirschkop.
I am filled with joy.
Richard and I can go home now
and our family can live in peace.
RICHARD
JUNE 1967
CENTRAL POINT, VIRGINIA
I was working on the car
in our yard—
well, what will be our yard.
We’re at the Jeter house again
until we can build our own house.
A car drove past slow enough.
I looked up—
Sheriff Brooks in his
black Ford truck,
that dog in the back—
driving down our road,
Passing Road.
What does he think he’s gonna do?
Make his own law.
He lost.
He lost but GOOD.
I laughed and got back
under the hood
of the Ford.
Millie walked up,
leaned on me,
looked at the engine
and said something about
how clean it looked.
Loving vs. Virginia Page 10
