Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Pierce, who was black and Native American, grew up in Central Point. Their story is attracting new attention because of an HBO documentary, “The Loving Story,” scheduled to air on Valentine’s Day. In addition, photos of the couple taken for Life magazine are on public display until May 6 in a show titled “The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet” at the International Center of Photography in New York.
The change in the racial climate since the Lovings’ arrest has been dramatic, said Donna Jeter, 43, an FBI analyst and one of Mildred Loving’s nieces. Growing up as Native American and black, Jeter said, she was picked on by other kids, who tapped their hands to their mouths to make war whoops when she passed.
“She made it easier,” Jeter said of her “Aunt Millie.”
Jeter’s sister, Dorothy, 35, said she now sees many more interracial couples and biracial children in Caroline County. “I feel Aunt Millie had a big part in that,” she said.
One of those children is 16-year-old Bo Hayes, the child of a German-born mother and African American father. Bo considers herself multiracial and has good friends of various races. “I speak two languages, German and English,” the Caroline High School sophomore said. “I have a German side that’s basically white and a black side. I’m just mixed.”
Her younger brother, Jimmy, who is 14, said he has friends who are biracial, too.
“My friend, his brother is white, and he’s black,” he said. “Kids don’t say nothing about it. They don’t mind. Nobody thinks it’s a big deal.”
In Caroline Middle School, 6 percent of the students identify themselves as multiracial.
Teachers say they never assume they can match the parent with the child by looks alone, because so many parents have skin colors different from their children’s.
“It’s much more than that,” Principal Angela Wright said of the official count of 61 multiracial students. “Maybe 61 in one grade.”
Comfort in numbers
The presence of so many multiracial children has helped make it a more comfortable place for Michael Tinnermon and Latoya Hogan to raise their two sons. Tinnermon, 32, a small-business owner, has a black father and white mother, and he appears to be white. Hogan, 26, a cosmetology student, is African American.
“It seems like everybody else here is mixed-race,” said Tinnermon, who grew up in Gaithersburg and said he considers Caroline County a more tolerant place. “We’ve never felt not accepted.”
When Desmond, 7, and Judiah, 3, ask why, as brothers, they have different skin colors, Tinnermon said he tells them, “It’s because Mommy’s dark and Daddy’s light.”
Floyd Thomas, 56, an African American who is a county supervisor and is married to the NAACP’s Linda Thomas, remembers segregation well. He could not go into the ice cream store on Main Street because of his color.
In his two decades on the board, he championed the construction of the courthouse obelisk commemorating African American contributions and the conversion of the formerly all-black Union High School to a community center and library.
“We’ve made great strides,” he said. “The county is symbolic of Main Street USA. It’s a place where you pick your friends on the things you have in common, not race.”
It’s not known how Mildred Loving, with her black and Native American heritage, identified herself in the 2000 Census. She died in 2008, 33 years after her husband died in a car crash. But in the 2010 Census, their daughter decided to check only one box when faced, like so many millions of other Americans, with boiling down a complex ancestry on a bureaucratic form.
“Native American,” said Peggy Loving Fortune, who is 52. “Just Native American.”
Yet she gives a different answer when children at Caroline Middle ask her what she is.
“I’m a mixture of colors,” she said she tells them. “I’m a rainbow.”
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