Heroes.My parents were not of the same race. My dad is a white man from Houston, Texas. My mom was a Filipino woman from Zamboanga, The Philippines. They got married in 1970 in the Philippines. If they had gotten married a few years earlier, their marriage would not have been recognized by at least 17 states. The United States Supreme Court eventually overruled laws across the country that stated racially mixed marriages were illegal. The person who brought the suit was a lady named Mildred Loving. She died last Friday, May 2nd.
Mildred Loving was a black women who had the audacity to marry a white man named Richard Loving in Washington D.C. They then decided to upset the "peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia" by daring to live their lives in their native state. Well I never...! Mildred and Richard were forced to leave Virginia to avoid jail time. They returned to Washington D.C., from where they launched their case against the Commonwealth of Virginia. The case that vindicated them was to be called Loving v. Virginia.
I have admired Mildred and Richard Loving from a distance ever since I heard their story. It is easy to see parallels with my own parents' story. People who married people from other races were taking a great chance back in the 1960s. I am sure that these people were aware that they were choosing a much harder road to travel down. But they did it because they did not want the state to abscond with what should be the most precious and private of decisions - the right to marry the person you loved.
The human race in my eyes is greatly flawed. There is a lot of greed out there. Lot of hatred too. Not enough of caring for your fellow humans. But I have hope in humanity. We can get better. One of the reasons that I loved my parents (and admired people like the Lovings) is that they showed the rest of us that people can get along in the most important unit of all, the family. My family has had problems over the years, sure. But it was just the normal family stuff. None of our problems were based on my parents coming from two different continents and two different cultures. Their marriage had the affect of making a racially mixed marriage ordinary. A marriage of this sort is not unnaturally or strange or weird or illegal. It is a marriage like any another.
It was real.
3 comments:
Glad you did a piece on this courageous couple (and your courageous parents.) There was a good story on them on All Things Considered.
Looking over the last 50 years it is encouraging how far we've come as a nation...yet so much work still remains to be done.
The thing I love about the Lovings (besides having the perfect name for breaking racial barriers around marriage) and your parents is that they made a difference by living their lives, without using the media, marches or turning it into a divisive issue. They helped change us by the example and courage of their love...
You are right, Josh. When people are bringing change to society, their best road forward is to show the unenlightened people that this change ain't that big a deal.
I see an analogy to today's gay rights movement. The more ordinary and ho-hum the movement is, the faster their acceptance will be.
“they made a difference by living their lives, without using the media, marches or turning it into a divisive issue”
Beautifully stated. It seems to me that in our society today, people are more interested in getting their name in the paper than they are on exacting real change. The true pioneers of this country are the ones who made their decisions based upon what they felt was right versus how many news networks will cover their story.
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