Mildred J. Loving, trailblazer, dies

Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down such laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Milford, Va.

The

Loving v. Virginia

decision overturned long-standing legal and social prohibitions against miscegenation in the United States. Celebrated at the time, the case sunk into obscurity until a 1996 TV film and a 2004 book revived interest in how the small-town couple changed history.

A modest homemaker, Mrs. Loving never thought she had done anything extraordinary. "It wasn't my doing," she told the Associated Press in a rare interview a year ago. "It was God's work."

Today, according to the Census Bureau, the nation has 4.3 million interracial couples.

That wasn't true in 1958, when Mildred Jeter, 17 and pregnant, and her childhood sweetheart, Richard P. Loving, 23, a white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in Washington.

Mrs. Loving later said she didn't realize it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, though her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said.

Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., to set up their home, someone called the law.

Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958, took them to jail, and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years.

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents," Bazile ruled. ". . . The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

The Lovings moved to Washington in 1959 and lived with a cousin, but they yearned to return to their rural roots.

Five years later, they were arrested for traveling together. Mrs. Loving, who had been following the 1964 civil rights legislation, wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to find out if the new law would allow the couple to travel freely.

They were referred to the American Civil Liberties Union and assigned an attorney, Bernard S. Cohen. With fellow attorney Philip J. Hirschkop, Cohen took the case to the high court.

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared: "There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."

The Lovings returned to their native Caroline County and settled there. Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunken driver struck their car. Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the crash.

A 1996 Showtime movie,

Mr. and Mrs. Loving

, told their story. "None of it was very true," she said in 2007. "The only part of it right was I had three children." A book by Phyl Newbeck,

Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers

, was published in 2004.

A son, Donald Loving, died in 2000. Survivors include two children, eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.