by:  Lynn Green

I am a firm believer of the fact that love is hard to find and folks should not discriminate based on racial background. Many have heard of the Loving case. Mildred and Richard Loving, back in 1967 challenged the [then] racist state of Virginia for their right to legally marry each other, and they won. She has passed away and may God rest her soul:

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

They had married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Returning to their Virginia hometown, they were arrested within weeks and convicted on charges of “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth,” according to their indictments.

The two of them eventually won their case, went on to have three children and Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn’t trying to change history _ she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

SOURCE