Loving v. Virginia

Loving v. Virginia was a 1967 landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case involved Richard Loving and Mildred Loving, who were married in 1958. He was a white man, and she was a woman of mixed black and American Indian heritage. They got married in Washington D.C. because in their home state of Virginia the law still forbade interracial marriages, known in those days as 'miscegenation'. After their marriage, they lived together in Caroline County, Virginia. In 1959 they were found guilty of violating the law and both were sentenced to 1 year in jail, although they were promised a suspended sentence if they left the state and didn't return for 25 years. Laws against interracial marriage were still in effect in 16 states as recently as 1967. Similar laws in other states had been repealed by then.