BY LAWRENCE LATANE III AND MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
Media General News Service

Published: May 7, 2008

Mildred Jeter Loving, a Caroline County woman who demolished the last legal bulwark of racial segregation in America, has died.

Loving was 68, and her cause to live in Virginia as a black woman with her white husband, Richard Loving, led to a landmark civil-rights case in 1967 that abolished anti-miscegenation laws nationwide.

Despite the influence of her lawsuit, “she was a very humble woman,” said her daughter, Peggy Fortune, who also lives in Caroline.

Loving died last Friday at her home in Milford after falling ill with pneumonia, according to Bernie Cohen, the Spotsylvania County attorney who took her case in 1963. Cohen described her as an unpretentious woman who was not expansive about her place in history.

“Her view was simple: ‘It’s a good case, and I’m glad it helped so many people.’ “

Legal scholars observed the 40th anniversary of Mrs. Loving’s lawsuit last June. In the case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s law against

interracial marriage as unconstitutional, along with the laws of 15 other states that still had such statutes on their books.

The court had ruled in previous landmark civil rights decisions that segregated public school systems and laws prohibiting voting based on race were unconstitutional.

“Throughout American history, laws against miscegenation were the first to appear and the last to go,” said Kim Forde-Mazrui, of the University of Virginia.

Author Phyl Newbeck, who wrote about the Lovings, noted: “The ironic thing is Mildred never wanted to be a civil-rights activist or pioneer. She simply wanted to be married to Richard.”