40th anniversary of the Loving Case -- Black/White Marriage

[jmm08]

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of an important Supreme Court case. Unimportant to many, but very important to me.

The Lovings were from Virginia. They were a fairly normal young unmarried couple in love and Mildred got pregnant. So they went to Washington DC and got married. Upon their return to Virginia, they were arrested and put in jail. Because Mildred was Black and Richard was White and they had violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act – anti-miscegenation statute.

40 years ago, the Supreme Court struck down all remaining anti-miscegenation statutes (although I think some states have still not enacted legislation to officially remove their statutes).

When my wife and I were married, it was a very small ceremony and we invited nobody to come with us. Just the Methodist minister and us – and I was very glad that he didn’t even seem to bat an eye or make any remark. No witnesses. And later Janet and I privately exchanged the vow that Ruth made to Naomi (neither of us was Catholic and I certainly never thought I would be). This is an indissoluble vow in my mind. A little over a year ago, I attended the Methodist minister’s funeral. I think he had married over 2,000 couples in our area over the years. His name was listed at the County registrars office and he did many small weddings. I was not alone in thanking the minister’s widow – that my marriage was a good one and I appreciated his very brief ministry to us. I suppose there were at least 100 other former grooms or brides

Anyway, to get back to Black / White. The anniversary is important to me because my wife Janet (born in Jamaica) is very dark skinned. And I am White. It seems to us that we are almost never noticed anymore in our fairly tolerant (and increasingly Hispanic) town. And in our own home, we almost never give any thought to race. I only infrequently think of skin color at home. Our children are very attractive.

I sing in the Choir at the Catholic Church on Saturday nights, and we attend a predominantly Black Baptist Church on Sundays because when we married we agreed it was important to attend Church as a family. I had no idea until about three years ago that I might become a Catholic. Around the time we married, there was another interracial couple in our Baptist Church that got married. The White woman’s parents did not initially accept the Black husband (although they are both very nice people). And after a few months, the Black man tried to kill himself by running his car into a tree. Fortunately he only got hurt a bit. They are doing OK now and have a few children. In the predominantly Black Baptist Church, we have at least one Catholic family. There are not many Blacks in our very large parish church. I don’t know why a Catholic family would rather attend the Black Church, except that perhaps they feel more welcome and that there is much more fellowship with other Christians.

A few years ago (I had just started RCIA), I attended a breakfast at the Catholic Church and told an elderly Catholic lady that I also attended First Baptist. She replied that she didn’t think White people were allowed to go there.

We still have a fair amount of evidence of segregation days – although many people probably don’t notice. Two barbershops that have always been next to each other (and one is always Black and the other not). When we took our son to a public preschool for learning delayed children, the Principle remarked on the history of the area (probably from an old speech that nobody had reviewed). That it was some time before there were enough Blacks to have the first Black Elementary school. Which angered me although I remained quiet and reserved. Many years ago, there were more Black residents in the county than white. I’m told that Nokesville (a small town near here) used to be a Whites-only community. Any Blacks working there might have lived elsewhere such as in a different nearby small town.

When we house-hunted after first getting married, we were guided away from a certain area of town. Even though we could afford it.

It has only been 40 years ago. But even as recently as five years ago, a Black co-worker advised me that there are still a few rural places in Virginia that we should not spend much time in.

jmm08

 

[jmm08]

I often wish that we could have some sort of busing program to integrate Churches. And frankly I do suppose that my family (who only infrequently attend the Catholic Church) and I may be part of Our Lady’s busing program. Mary has been so very helpful to me. Even though I’m White, perhaps when some Catholics at Church see me with my Black Wife and interracial kids, perhaps they need to get an attitude adjustment. And maybe they do sometimes. And maybe some new people visiting the Church might see me with my family and think to themselves that they may be welcome too. I’m not criticizing my Catholic Church. There are very large numbers of other minority groups. But not so many Blacks. And I know the Church staff and Priests are welcoming everyone.

You know, I suppose it is also possible that if my family is part of Our Lady’s busing program – that we were first sent to First Baptist because they hardly had any Whites at all. In any case, we were always welcome there. It is likely that there were at least a few Blacks there who were predjudiced against Whites, and that seeing us in that setting may have helped adjust their attitudes as well.

In any case, I’d prefer that Protestants (especially at my Baptist Church) would wake up and find out that the sacraments were not only symbolic. That they are real and life-changing.

I think there are some in the diocese that think much has already been done. Because they built a Catholic Church for Blacks. This is great – just as good as when there were Italian Catholic Churches, Polish and other ethnic Catholic Churches (such as where I grew up in upstate New York). Martin Luther King, Jr remarked once that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. It is. But at least around here we are making some progress. There are now more interracial couples at First Baptist. Families like mine are no longer a rarity.

When we first started to attend First Baptist, we became friends with another Jamaican couple. In Jamaica they were Catholic. When they got here, they went to First Baptist. This was perhaps in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Can you think of any valid reason why a Catholic couple would rather not go to the local Catholic Church? I think perhaps they didn’t feel welcome. Our parish is very large and people don’t often talk to each other at all, so maybe not feeling welcome was not a matter of race. But even so, I’m fairly sure a likely case is that they didn’t see any Black people in the congregation.

jmm08

 

[Ahimsa]

The South will rise again – thanks to couples like the Lovings.

 

[seekerz]

It still amazes me how much we cling to cultural norms rather than Gospel norms which hold the best blueprints for integration that I can find: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” …

God bless your family for rightly putting love first!

 

[Amolibri]

Thank you for your story, jmm. I live in upstate NY…and our parish has many young families. I have seen very few black people at Mass, but they seem to be quite welcome, when they do come. I think you are right about the difficulty of being a very small minority. I’d feel the same going into a church where most people are black.

It is great that you see more tolerance…even in the Catholic Church.
When I was growing up, we were told not to enter any Protestant Church. Needless to say, I have entered many non-Catholic churches since then…and a few Synagogues. I’ve also sung in the choir, and we’ve had many joint recitals with other choirs, with different ethnic and racial groups. I loved it !

God bless you & your family,
Lena

 

[jmm08]

A few disappointing articles, and one that is encouraging:
Washington Post:

If [George] Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for “white and colored children” and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.

CNN:

Alabama voters on Tuesday repealed the state’s century-old ban against interracial marriage, an unenforceable but embarrassing throwback to the state’s segregationist past.
The vote was running 59 percent to 41 percent, with 58 percent of the voted counted.

A lot of the old deep south is still that way.

About three years ago (not even started in RCIA), after reading the “Race, Negro” article in the Catholic Encyclopedia I became rather upset – and was absolutely drunk in my own bile to be honest. I had not noticed when it was written and I was greatly offended. Immediately afterwards, I found the article on “Mixed Marriages” and was already so upset that I mis-interpreted it as the Catholic Church opposed to interracial marriages. Of course I became extremely outraged (and this very near the point where I decided the Catholic Church was God’s Church). This in turn must have greatly upset Our Lady, who did not take much time to get me straightened out. [And I wrote about it all at that time on this web site]. And since then Mary has been so helpful. I now think that the Catholic Church cannot really do any permanent injustice to any sincere seeker of the Truth. Because even if or when it does so, I think Our Lady will do something about it that will more than compensate – even if she must personally get involved. At least that is my testimony concerning my experiences. And note that I don’t think any Catholic has ever made me feel unwelcome on account of race. Misconceptions are most often the result of the devil trying to interfere.

]The negro has a religious nature. His docile, cheerful, and emotional disposition is much influenced by his immediate environment, whether those surroundings be good or evil. Catholic faith and discipline are known to have a wholesome effect on the race. … The negro is naturally gregarious, and the dissipations and conditions of city life in many instances corrupt the native simplicity of the younger generation to the sorrow of their more conservative elders.

The encouraging article.
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education -- Weekly Bulletin:

Forty years ago in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia ruled that states did not have the authority to prohibit interracial marriage. At the time 16 states did not permit the marriage of blacks and whites.

Now interracial marriages have become commonplace. New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 7 percent of the 59 million married-couple families in the United States have spouses from different races. In 1970 about 2 percent of all marriages were interracial. The number of marriages where one spouse is white and the other is black has increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 today.

A new study published in the American Journal of Sociology finds that men and women in interracial marriages actually do a better job of parenting than other couples. The study found that compared to families where the spouses are the same race, biracial parents invested more in educational resources such as books and computers for their children, funded and supported more cultural activities for their offspring, and spent more time helping their children deal with problems.

Please note that much of the time I hardly consider race. We live a rather normal life and we face typical problems. Among them is that I am now Catholic (or trying to become one) and the rest of the family isn’t. My son would much rather go to the Catholic Church (but that doesn’t count). He only likes it better because it takes less time before we are out – and this is not valid in my book. Today is his Birthday and he wanted to have no prayers said today at the dinner table because it was his Birthday. We hope this is just a stage. My wife could really spank him for thatI’m trying to encourage my wife that we need to do quite a bit more towards Christian education of our Children. And frankly if they are good Baptists, I won’t mind in comparison to not honoring God at all. They see me and know I go to the Catholic Church and sing in the choir on Saturday nights. So they know how I believe. I suppose our home’s foyer looks more Catholic than most Catholic homes.

My wife should blame herself. She was the first one (about four years ago) to start hanging up pictures of St. Bernadette.

jmm08

 

[Ahimsa]

My wife should blame herself. She was the first one (about four years ago) to start hanging up pictures of St. Bernadette.

jmm08

Being from Jamaica, I would think she would prefer the Anglicans, rather than the Baptists.

 

[BioCatholic]

I am just amazed that people are judged by the amount of a certain protein (melanin) in the dermis of the skin. ???

That’s like judging a person who makes too much Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE). How ridiculous is that? Maybe we can judge people with not enough of a protein, say lactate dehydrogenase, and we can discriminate against lactose intolerant people.

I laugh to myself at white, or otherwise, people who pass judgment on a dark skinned individual.

I wonder how much they would dislike melanin if we stuck them in sub-Sahara Africa for a few months?

Actually, I envy the evolutionary advantage of excess melanin. I’m blonde hair and blue eyes, having spent most of my summers in college at the beach, and now living in Florida. It’s a matter of time before I am hit with melanoma. Anyone ever hear of a dark-skinned individual ever getting metastic melanoma? Yeah, they don’t. Who is the inferior individual now, with respect to evolution?

 

[Smber2c]

The South will rise again – thanks to couples like the Lovings.

5 words into this post I was very scared. I’m from the south, graduated from Ole Miss. I love the south. Southern Charm. Good ole’ Southern Hospitality. And do hope the region gets bigger, better, and just as you suggest more racially accepting.

(though I’m so glad that most people from this region seem to still get embarassed about things like children out of marriage or divorce. Racially accepting Morally ambivalent )

 

[Nino]

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of an important Supreme Court case. Unimportant to many, but very important to me.

The Lovings were from Virginia. They were a fairly normal young unmarried couple in love and Mildred got pregnant. So they went to Washington DC and got married. Upon their return to Virginia, they were arrested and put in jail. Because Mildred was Black and Richard was White and they had violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act – anti-miscegenation statute.

40 years ago, the Supreme Court struck down all remaining anti-miscegenation statutes (although I think some states have still not enacted legislation to officially remove their statutes).

When my wife and I were married, it was a very small ceremony and we invited nobody to come with us. Just the Methodist minister and us – and I was very glad that he didn’t even seem to bat an eye or make any remark. No witnesses. And later Janet and I privately exchanged the vow that Ruth made to Naomi (neither of us was Catholic and I certainly never thought I would be). This is an indissoluble vow in my mind. A little over a year ago, I attended the Methodist minister’s funeral. I think he had married over 2,000 couples in our area over the years. His name was listed at the County registrars office and he did many small weddings. I was not alone in thanking the minister’s widow – that my marriage was a good one and I appreciated his very brief ministry to us. I suppose there were at least 100 other former grooms or brides

Anyway, to get back to Black / White. The anniversary is important to me because my wife Janet (born in Jamaica) is very dark skinned. And I am White. It seems to us that we are almost never noticed anymore in our fairly tolerant (and increasingly Hispanic) town. And in our own home, we almost never give any thought to race. I only infrequently think of skin color at home. Our children are very attractive.

I sing in the Choir at the Catholic Church on Saturday nights, and we attend a predominantly Black Baptist Church on Sundays because when we married we agreed it was important to attend Church as a family. I had no idea until about three years ago that I might become a Catholic. Around the time we married, there was another interracial couple in our Baptist Church that got married. The White woman’s parents did not initially accept the Black husband (although they are both very nice people). And after a few months, the Black man tried to kill himself by running his car into a tree. Fortunately he only got hurt a bit. They are doing OK now and have a few children. In the predominantly Black Baptist Church, we have at least one Catholic family. There are not many Blacks in our very large parish church. I don’t know why a Catholic family would rather attend the Black Church, except that perhaps they feel more welcome and that there is much more fellowship with other Christians.

A few years ago (I had just started RCIA), I attended a breakfast at the Catholic Church and told an elderly Catholic lady that I also attended First Baptist. She replied that she didn’t think White people were allowed to go there.

We still have a fair amount of evidence of segregation days – although many people probably don’t notice. Two barbershops that have always been next to each other (and one is always Black and the other not). When we took our son to a public preschool for learning delayed children, the Principle remarked on the history of the area (probably from an old speech that nobody had reviewed). That it was some time before there were enough Blacks to have the first Black Elementary school. Which angered me although I remained quiet and reserved. Many years ago, there were more Black residents in the county than white. I’m told that Nokesville (a small town near here) used to be a Whites-only community. Any Blacks working there might have lived elsewhere such as in a different nearby small town.

When we house-hunted after first getting married, we were guided away from a certain area of town. Even though we could afford it.

It has only been 40 years ago. But even as recently as five years ago, a Black co-worker advised me that there are still a few rural places in Virginia that we should not spend much time in.

jmm08

 

[Nino]

…recently a niece and her hubby visited us here on Long Island …she is Irish American and he is from Haiti…they stayed for a week and what a nice couple…they live in Chicago!..I could never figure what busines is it of others who marries whom…as long as they love each other who cares!.Teddy Roosevelt observed back in 1900 that people in South America were much more tolerant of 'mixed’marriages then in North America and that is a compliment and all Americans should learn from that tolerance. .altho at times when my long time wife and I have a ‘family discussion’ she may say in mock huffy indignant tones…"indeed,and our marriage is an integrated one!..well !!!..of course my wife is Irish and I am Italo…Nino

 

[jmm08]

Philadelphia Inquirer:

Today, June 12, multiracial families are celebrating Loving Day. It’s not an official holiday, but it is the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing interracial marriage. On this date in 1967, the U.S. Supreme court, in Loving v. Virginia, overturned antimiscegenation laws across the country, declaring that interracial relationships were legal and that the right to marry whomever one chose regardless of race was a civil right.

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

Sadly, the discrimination seems to be reversing now. My children were adopted transracially. Aside from one guy when we were visiting relatives in Alabama who stopped and stared in a restaurant (and almost got a hefty piece of the great-grandmother’s mind before he just walked away!), white people do not usually comment negatively. (Frequently ignorantly, but not negatively.)

The people who watched us during masses, followed me into my CCD room, screamed at the CCD directors about us, threatened to call social services to take away my child because my daughter was not wearing socks (the weather had just started to get cold… I was wearing sandals, and she wouldn’t keep socks on longer than 5 seconds, anyways), and all this on a rare night when my husband was not teaching at CCD with me (coincidence? I doubt it.)… they were black. I spent half an hour hiding in a dark room trying to keep my baby quiet so they wouldn’t find me, listening to them screaming at the CCD directors that, “That white chick should never have been given that child, and we’re going to make sure it gets fixed! I’m a social worker, and I know how to do it.”

The guy at the sandwich shop making comments (“You seen ‘Losing Isaiah?’ Well, there’s Isaiah.” It’s a movie that concludes the black kindergardener is better off with his recovering crack addict mother than with his white family who raised him for five years because she’s black and they’re not) behind a tall counter where he could be heard but not seen? Black. The kids at the playground who insist on pointing out that, “You can’t be their mother!” Black. The woman from the local Catholic Charities who told me on the phone, “You sound white, right? Well, it’s illegal to adopt transracially in this country, so you’ll have to wait about two years for a white baby.” Black. The organisation that says black children really shouldn’t be placed with white families unless you’ve tried absolutely everything else (and probably bounced them around foster care through their early, critically formative years)? The National Association of Black Social Workers.

To be fair, I’ve had some positive comments from Blacks, too. But they’ve been the refreshing dose of common sense in the midst of a lot of, “YOU did it to us, so WE are going to mistreat you.” There were laws against marrying across racial lines in every state at some point, but the condemnation and pressure to break up those who did marry were not restricted to the white community.

 

[jmm08]

I think some time ago I saw posted on a church bulletin board a notice. That Black or interracial couples were needed to adopt or provide foster care for Black babies. I could be mistaken in my recollection.

Our family regularly attends a predominantly Black church (we’ve been members there for more than eight years). We still do, because I’m the only one trying to be Catholic and my wife and I agreed that it was important to us both that we attend Church as a family. So we still do. I go to the Catholic Church primarily on Saturday nights (I sing in the choir).

A few years before I went to RCIA – while I was not thinking Catholic at all – my stepdaughter and I prepared some music to do together in the Baptist Church. And we did do some music a few times. My stepdaughter sang while I accompanied her on an electric piano. To me this was unusual and special because I couldn’t really recall seeing a teenage daughter do music together with her father in any church. And I think there are a few things that my stepdaughter can talk about with me that she might be uncomfortable talking about with her mother. We aren’t terribly close at all, but at least I think I’ve been half-OK as a step-father.

My original decision that we should go to the Baptist Church was this. Until she was 10 and moved here to America, my stepdaughter was raised by her father’s relatives and mostly attended a Jehovah’s Witnesses Church. As a Christian, I thought she might best hear the message of salvation in the Baptist Church. She regularly attended Sunday School classes with peers of her same age while she was in middle and high school. And she did accept Jesus and got Baptized (immersion).

To me the bridged father/teenage-stepdaughter gap (performing together in Church) was the amazing story. But to many others, perhaps the racial dimension (I’m White and she is Black) would be the amazing story. Bridging the racial gap is a non-issue in my home – we don’t have any racial gap when we are alone in the house together. We are just being ourselves and this is never an issue to us. It is only an issue if others make it an issue in how they speak or act towards us.

The only potential racial problem in our home might be this – I think our middle-age son (who nearly looks White) doesn’t like it if his Black mother comes to school to eat lunch with him. I think he might have a problem with having his friends find out that his mother is Black (and very dark skinned).

Yet, when I was his age, I think I was the same way. And race wasn’t part of it – my mother is also White. At his age, being seen with mom just isn’t cool. It is embarrassing. I regret that I felt that way, and I don’t know why.

jmm08

 

[jc-servant]

jmm08 it was good to hear your story. I’m from a multi-racial family although both of my parents are officially “negro” if you know what I mean. Gotta love the old “one drop rule” that decided things for you without resorting to reason or science.

Anyway, I think that I’ve shared a number of your family’s experiences because my parents look like an interracial couple. My mother’s mother is in fact the one who is biracial black/white, but her children only show their European heritage in coloring. My aunt actually has red hair and pale green eyes with a very pale Irish complexion. My father’s side is black/Cherokee/Irish, but he looks strongly Indian in facial features and build with his hair being the main clue that he is also black. I thought it was funny that until we moved to Oklahoma most people never saw the Indian heritage because they don’t expect to meet any Indians. Once we got there most people saw the Indian and didn’t notice he was black.

I can remember from my childhood being followed and stared at openly when we drove across the country, especially in the South. My father was military, so we had more than 24 hours of driving at times to get home to his parents’ home in Kentucky for holidays. I also remember my father getting extremely angry at an ignorant officer in 1979 when we moved to Oklahoma from Germany. He had the nerve to walk up to my father and ask him out of the blue, “What is your wife?” after seeing Mom drop Dad off at work. As if it were any of his business.

What really surprised us were the comments and attention we received in Europe from locals. Everyone seemed fascinated when we were in public as a family. It seemed that people assumed my mother was German when we lived there, if they had not met us. We overheard a few “war baby” type comments when Dad wasn’t with us, but mostly people were very nice. However, the main interest was my father. He kept his hair cut so close that his head looked shaved and people would yell, “Kojak want a comb?” or “Kojak want a lolly?” as we played tourist. My father would carry Tootsie pops around and play along with them. It was kind of crazy though, like being with a celebrity all of the time.

I’m also celebrating the Loving case anniversary because it marks a profound moment in our history as a country. It helped a number of couples, especially those in the military who were many times forced to hide their “illegal” marriages when they had to travel in certain states.

 

[SeekerJen]

Gardening Mommy, that scares me. We are planning to adopt, and as we don’t care about race…this is food for thought, especially as we currently live in a very self-segregated area (not our neighborhood, which is very integrated, but metro Detroit as a whole).

This whole thread is interesting, and I’m sorry that I didn’t find it in time to celebrate the anniversary. My parents are considered a mixed marriage, although as mom is White and Dad is Mexican, it’s more of an inter-ethnic marriage. I look more southern European than anything else so I haven’t received much negativity (although as I can pass for Middle Eastern, I received some static after 9-11), but my parents and Dad in particular have been on the receiving end of hostility. My mom has recalled that during their honeymoon 36 years ago, she cried from fear on a couple of occasions because of the treatment they received. Even now they have recently been refused service in a local restaurant, and my dad has been the recipient of hostile stares and rude treatment in stores.

I’ve always been grateful that their respective families couldn’t have cared less about the different ethnic backgrounds. They were more concerned about the religious intermingling: Dad is from a strong Mexican Catholic background, and Mom is from a nominally Protestant background.

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

Gardening Mommy, that scares me. We are planning to adopt, and as we don’t care about race…this is food for thought, especially as we currently live in a very self-segregated area (not our neighborhood, which is very integrated, but metro Detroit as a whole)…

Generally, the responses have been positive; in discussing black/white tensions, I was only talking about the problems that have occurred, not all of the joys and wonder of these two little people I’m fortunate enough to have call me Mommy. I don’t mean to scare anybody off from transracial adoption.

BUT, you will offend some people just by exsisting as a transracially-adopting family and you should understand that so that it isn’t quite such a shock when it happens. We live in a very integrated area (lots of military, lots of transracial marriages), but the bigots tend to stand out when they open their mouths. The ones that hurt the worst were the ones in church and Catholic Charities; you always wish you could feel safe, at least in Church, from such idiocy.

There are MANY more black children in the adoption/foster care system than there are black families to adopt them. There really needs to be more transracial adoption, but some people and agencies are afraid, I think, of Jesse Jackson or somebody being offended and starting a media circus. It’s sad; it hurts the children and the families who could’ve had a faster adoption process but are forced to wait for a same-race baby.

When people are a little more reasonable and open to discussion, they frequently come out with, “Well, how are you going to raise them in their culture?”

Um… my kids were born in my metropolitan area, so, sorry, but they aren’t really African. My daughter had a cute kente cloth hippo I bought for her as an infant and we do her hair in locs (I REFUSE to have it straightened, and she was tired of me re-braiding it every few weeks). We eat Slovak kolach and sirach at Easter and uplatky at Christmas. We eat barbeque and fried chicken with the Southern half of the family. And by “their culture”, are you talking about P. Diddy and gangster rap, or are you talking about Winston Marsalis, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Alan Keyes? (and am I not allowed to admire these people because I’m white?)

 

[Nino]

Sadly, the discrimination seems to be reversing now. My children were adopted transracially. Aside from one guy when we were visiting relatives in Alabama who stopped and stared in a restaurant (and almost got a hefty piece of the great-grandmother’s mind before he just walked away!), white people do not usually comment negatively. (Frequently ignorantly, but not negatively.)

The people who watched us during masses, followed me into my CCD room, screamed at the CCD directors about us, threatened to call social services to take away my child because my daughter was not wearing socks (the weather had just started to get cold… I was wearing sandals, and she wouldn’t keep socks on longer than 5 seconds, anyways), and all this on a rare night when my husband was not teaching at CCD with me (coincidence? I doubt it.)… they were black. I spent half an hour hiding in a dark room trying to keep my baby quiet so they wouldn’t find me, listening to them screaming at the CCD directors that, “That white chick should never have been given that child, and we’re going to make sure it gets fixed! I’m a social worker, and I know how to do it.”

The guy at the sandwich shop making comments (“You seen ‘Losing Isaiah?’ Well, there’s Isaiah.” It’s a movie that concludes the black kindergardener is better off with his recovering crack addict mother than with his white family who raised him for five years because she’s black and they’re not) behind a tall counter where he could be heard but not seen? Black. The kids at the playground who insist on pointing out that, “You can’t be their mother!” Black. The woman from the local Catholic Charities who told me on the phone, “You sound white, right? Well, it’s illegal to adopt transracially in this country, so you’ll have to wait about two years for a white baby.” Black. The organisation that says black children really shouldn’t be placed with white families unless you’ve tried absolutely everything else (and probably bounced them around foster care through their early, critically formative years)? The National Association of Black Social Workers.

To be fair, I’ve had some positive comments from Blacks, too. But they’ve been the refreshing dose of common sense in the midst of a lot of, “YOU did it to us, so WE are going to mistreat you.” There were laws against marrying across racial lines in every state at some point, but the condemnation and pressure to break up those who did marry were not restricted to the white community.

 

[Nino]

Back in 1910 Theodore Roosevelt was visiting South America and commented on how well the treatment of inter-racial marriages worked and that America has much to learn from that…one of my daughters married a Latino ,he was only an XRay Technician at the time of marriage,she worked with him,got him into med school now he is a doctor…another daughter adopted a lovely little angel from Colombia…we babysit and what a blessing she is.the love of our lives…looks like Dora with curls!!! When one does something out of love ,so what if others are bewitched,bothered and bewildered…God Bless …Nino

 

[jmm08]

Mildred Jeter, who was African- and Native-American, and Richard Loving, who was white, first met as children in Central Point, Virginia. In 1958, they married in Washington, D.C. because interracial couples could not marry in Virginia. They didn’t raise a ruckus over violating the Virginia law, they simply returned home to live their lives. But a month later the police raided their home in the middle of the night and arrested them for “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.” Richard spent a night in jail. Mildred, who was pregnant at the time, was jailed for five days. They pleaded guilty and the judge in the case sentenced them each to a year in prison, but suspended the sentence provided they left Virginia and did not return together for 25 years. During the sentencing, Judge Leon Bazile said that God never intended for the races to mix, so their marriage was an abomination.
…
On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Lovings favor. In the decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “… freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
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A bricklayer, Richard Loving built a house for his family in Central Point Virginia. Mildred raised their children. In 1975, Richard was killed in a car accident. Mildred Loving never remarried and died May 2, 2008 in the same home Richard built.