ataxiwardance

surawesome:

Found object.

Oh gosh. I think my heart just melted.

…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.

In 2007, 32 years after her husband died, Mrs Loving - who herself passed away the following year - released a statement in support of same-sex marriage. She said: ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.’

Photographs of the Loving’s interracial marriage at a time when it was banned in 16 states

Mildred Delores Jeter Loving and her husband Richard Perry Loving were plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967).

The Lovings were an interracial married couple who were criminally charged under a Virginia statute banning such marriages. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings filed suit seeking to overturn the law. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.