Mildred Loving, Who Challenged Interracial Marriage Ban, Dies
A woman who made history by challenging Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage has died.
Mildred Loving died at the age of 68, her daughter told the Associated Press. Mildred and Richard Loving were newlyweds when they were arrested in 1958 and convicted of violating the marriage law. Mildred was black and her husband was white.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban in the 1967 landmark case Loving v. Virginia.
Loving told the Associated Press last year that she still thought about her husband every day, more than 30 years after his death. Richard Loving was killed in 1975 by a car accident caused by a drunken driver. Mildred Loving lost her eye in the same mishap.
“He used to take care of me,” she said of her husband. “He was my support, he was my rock.”
