Quiet Va. Wife Ended Interracial Marriage Ban

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared: "There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. . . . There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."

At a news conference at their attorneys' offices, the Lovings seemed stunned.

"I feel free now. . . . It was a great burden," Mildred Loving quietly said, according to news articles.

She and her husband returned to Caroline County, where they both were born. He built their house, and the couple settled there. Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunk driver struck their car. Mildred Loving, who was also in the car, lost her right eye in the collision.

A 1996 Showtime movie about the case, "Mr. and Mrs. Loving," told their story. "None of it was very true," she said in 2007. "The only part of it right was I had three children."

Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont lawyer, saw the movie and wanted to read more about it. No one had written a book, so she sought out Loving for interviews but ran into the same shyness others had encountered. "She was very quiet. She really didn't like to talk about herself," Newbeck said yesterday. Newbeck's book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers," was published in 2004. "To her death, she never felt she had done anything noteworthy. She never considered herself a pioneer."

Others did. Loving's church, St. Stephens Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Va., gave her a certificate recognizing the trailblazing lawsuit.

"The preacher at my church classified me with Rosa Parks," she told The Washington Post in 1992. "I don't feel like that. Not at all. What happened, we really didn't intend for it to happen. What we wanted, we wanted to come home."

A son, Donald Loving, died in 2000.

Survivors include two children, Peggy Fortune of Central Point and Sidney Loving of Tappahannock, Va.; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.