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It's Friday!
And it's Loving Day, which we're diving into deep with our first guest editor. In case you missed it, we now have an archives section of our website where you can view all previous emails. I've also increased the font size in these emails for readability – thanks for that feedback!
Thanks for your financial support! You can give one-time on PayPal, start a subscription on Patreon, or send Venmo to @nicoleacardoza.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Spread the word about Loving Day using the steps outlined on their website.
2. Listen to audio from the Loving v. Virginia court case on NPR.
GET EDUCATED
From The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait photographed by Grey Villet
What does Loving Day represent?
On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of Loving v. Virginia for interracial marriages. The unanimous decision upheld that distinctions drawn based on race were not constitutional.
Who are the Lovings?
Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were a couple from Virginia. Richard, who identified as white, and Mildred, a woman of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, were longtime friends who had fallen in love. They got married in 1958 in Washington, DC, where interracial marriage was legal at the time, and then returned home to Virginia.
On July 11, 1958, just five weeks after their wedding, the Lovings were woken in their bed at 2am by the police, who entered unlawfully, and were arrested by the local sheriff.
Side note: in March 2020 Breonna Taylor and her partner were also visited in the middle of the night by the police without a warrant. She lost her life, and her killers have still not been arrested. We featured her story and ways to help in an email last week. Check it out >
Richard and Mildred were indicted on charges of violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, which deemed interracial marriages a felony. The court case ruled that they were be exiled from Virginia for 25 years. Mildred Loving wrote a letter to the US Attorney General – Robert F. Kennedy – asking for help. Kennedy referred the Lovings to the ACLU, which agreed to take their case. Read more >
U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings on June 12, 1967, and as a result 16 states were forced to overturn their anti-miscegenation laws, too. Alabama was the last state to abolish their law in 2000 (and no, this is not a typo).
What did this conversation say about race?
This case was undoubtedly a monumental win for civil rights, especially because there's so much ugliness hiding in the details of the court casee. If you read the court case in full, you can review what the Loving couple and all interracial marriages were up against. The state of Virginia's rules against interracial marriages, outlined in the Racial Integrity Act and echoed by many other states until this ruling, were meant "'to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,' and to prevent 'the corruption of blood,' 'a mongrel breed of citizens,' and 'the obliteration of racial pride,' obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy".
The state created a defense that compared anti-miscegenation statutes to the right to prohibit incest, polygamy, and underage marriage. They defended that children of interracial marriages would be victims, ineligible to own rights to land, and should not have to suffer from their parents' decision to wed. You can listen to audio from this court case on NPR.
“We fail to see how any reasonable man can but conclude that these laws are slavery laws were incepted to keep slaves in their place, were prolonged to keep the slaves in their place, and in truth, the Virginia law still view the Negro race as a slave race, that these are the most odious laws to come before the court. They robbed the Negro race of its dignity and only a decision which will reach the full body of these laws in the State of Virginia will change that.”
From 'Illicit Cohabitation': Listen To 6 Stunning Moments From Loving V. Virginia on NPR
GUEST EDITOR
By Bonkosi Horn
As of 2015, one in six newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. Today's guest editor is Bonkosi Horn, co-founder and Creative Director of Freedom Apothecary. She shares her experience as a biracial woman.
I am many things.
Amongst those many things, one of them that I am most proud of, most grateful for and most challenged by is this one: I am biracial.
I am the product of a beloved, dynamic and unique interracial marriage. I am 50% white Iowan. I am 50% black Congolese. I am no more one than I am the other. I am the child of both of my parents, which may not fit into the narrative so many want to have about my own personal experience. The choosing of sides, of identifying with one part of my whole being over another.
This is not a ‘what I am’ but a ‘who I am;’ it’s how I see the world, experience the world and move through the world in this light-brown skin of mine. My biracial, multicultural identity is the very thing that shaped every interaction I had growing up surrounded by my white family from very small-town Iowa to the traditionally Congolese parties I hated going to as a girl and continues to this day, married to a black man, with black children in this very black city of Philadelphia.
We exist in a country where it’s easier for us to see things in black and white because anything else makes things confusing, makes us uncomfortable; the blending of cultures and of colors puts us somewhere on a spectrum that’s hard to pinpoint. And so I know that walking down the street, you see with your eyes a woman with my skin, living in this body, a black woman, which I get to be. But I also don’t exist in this body to make you comfortable, to suit your needs or for you to label who or what I am — I get to decide that for myself.
I am so many more things if you open your eyes.
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