1. 2016 Directed by Jeff Nichols
Loving
2016
Directed by Jeff Nichols

2. Loving
The film Loving is based on the story of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, a couple from Caroline County, Virginia who married despite laws against interracial marriage.
The law was an anti-miscegenation law, called the “Racial Integrity Act” that was passed in 1924 and divided everyone into two groups, white and colored.
Colored included everyone not 100% white. Virginia had a “one drop rule” that said that you had to be 100% white.

3. Mildred and Richard
They met when she was 11 and he was 17- he was friends with her older brothers- they worked on cars together.
They dated for a year or so and when Mildred was 18 she got pregnant. They decided to go to Washington D.C. to get married, where interracial marriage was not illegal.
When they got back (80 mile trip) and were staying with her family the police arrested them for breaking the state’s laws against interracial marriage and for going over the state line to evade the laws.
July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008
October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975

4. The Loving’s Case
They were assisted in their federal case by Robert Kennedy and the ACLU.
Robert Kennedy was president John Kennedy’s brother and the Attorney General from During that time he pursued action against Organized Crime syndicates and in favor of new Civil Rights for African Americans.
He referred their case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

5. The A.C.L.U.
The A.C.L.U. was created in 1920 as a non-profit organization to defend the civil rights of every American.
They started during the first Red Scare, when the Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began subverting people’s civil rights in his search for ‘radicals’ and ‘communists’ in America.
He authorized illegal search and seizure of property and police brutality in arrest and holding of the people arrested.
Ever since then, the ACLU, operating on a combination of donated legal services, grants and donations, has taken cases that are related to the defense of Civil Rights.

6. The Loving Case
The Lovings were in love. They raised a happy, loving family with three children and were in love their whole life.
The significance of their case is immense. Not only did their case allow interracial marriage, it was also the basis of the challenge to allow same sex marriage.
Today, 1/6 marriages in America are interracial. It was less than 3% when the Lovings won their case in 1967.