Up next here on American History tv on cspan3, a conversation on the case from the Virginia Historical society. Jeter was not a white woman. Richard loving all agree was a white man. So Virginia State law not only rendered their 1958 marriage illegal, but also required a penalty of at least a year in prison for it. Circuit court judge leon f. Dizile chose to suspend their prison sentences if they agreed to leave the state. After a few years of exile, loving sought Legal Assistance to let them return home to virginia. Today our speaker will be focusing on the suit mr. And mrs. Loving brought against the commonwealth, a case that eventually made its way to the u. S. Supreme court. The lovings challenge the conceit that the state could tell two people that simply because they did not share the same racial identity they could not marry. And if they married that they should be in prison for doing. This be explore their tangled biographies on a ruling, a ruling whose echos can be heard in the Juris Prudence today. Peter wallenstein is a professor of history at Virginia Tech where hes thought for more than 30 years. Before that he taught in new york, canada, japan and korea. His teaching has brought him a number of awards, including the alumni award for teaching excellence at tech. In addition to his role as a distinguished teacher, peter has long been a leading historian of virginia and the american south. His various books include cradle of america which was a publication coming out at the 400 anniversary of virginia, a history for virginia for fourth graders and path breaking books on Public Policy in 18th century in georgia and on conflict and change in 20th so please join me in a warm, vhs welcome to peter walenstein. [ applause ] good afternoon. We already did that. Thank you all so much for coming out today. And special thanks to the Virginia Historical society for hosting this event and for in fact giving a good home to one of the more sources that i used in constructing a portion of this book. I heard something. I woke up, a little at first. It was this bright, light in the room. A strange man next to my bed. Two, no, three men. Thats not exactly the voice of Mildred Loving. Its not exactly the words shes used to describe that experience. But it gives us an idea of the terror of that night. The sudden intruders. And its a pro log to what came after. The other day i ran across a brandnew book just last week on the lovings. It got the names right. Richard and mildred. I got the kids names right, too, donald and peggy and sidney. It just didnt present them in the right birth order. Its so hard to get the facts right on this story. So we see that time and again, books published, obituaries when mildred died, films, time and again the most elemental facts get wrong. I try to do it right. I try. The core story, mildred jeter. Do you know how to spell that . Jeter. A lot of jeters running around in virginia, some white, some black, thats in a binary role that classifies everybody as just one or the other. Mildred jeter and richard loving that was his name. They grew up in rural Caroline County. So an hours drive northeast of here. Its in a part of the world i remember most first going there. Theres a canopy of pine trees coming up both sides of a narrow road and meet in the middle. The yellow line has long since gone away. If you see two houses at the same time, you know youve come upon a settlement. Its not really near almost anything else. But, Central Point sports a fairly imposing building, st. Stevens Baptist Church where mildred went all her life. And the cemetery across the road from the church, gives some clues about the people and the family from the area over the years. And the cemetery like the church has a triracial constituency, white, black and indian. Now in june 58, as paul just said, the couple got married. They wept off to d. C. Richard thought they couldnt get married in virginia but he thought they certainly cot ko in d. C. He thought they probably ought to get married. Because mildred was pregnant. This was the 1950s, a dear abby story, i didnt make this up. But somebody wrote dear abby back in those days, before the pill and said, expressed concern about a member of the family who had just had a child and well under nine months after the marriage. And abby wrote back and said not to worry. The child was on time. The wedding was late. So they went off to d. C. To do what so many young couples did in those days. They got married, they came back and all was well, at least for a month. Now mildred called herself on her marriage license, the form she filled out in d. C. , she racial identity, indian. Years later, when she wrote for legal help, she identified herself as part negro and part indian. Now thats how she described herself. It didnt matter how she described herself. Under virginia law, racial integrity act this woman is a colored woman. It does not matter the details. And richard, well nobody ever suggested he was anything other than white. Though how could anybody actually know . So he could not marry somebody who wasnt white, she couldnt marry someone who was, and they did and it led to the terrorstruck moment i opened up with. This teenaged bride, late one night, not very far from here, some 57 years ago. Without which, we would have no subject of todays talk, because no one would have ever heard of the lovings and there would be no case, lovings versus virginia but here we are. In january of 59 the trial came. Plea bargain drove them out of the state, exile. 25 years, dont ever come back together during that time. So they moved back to d. C. , it wasnt that far. They could live there, the law wouldnt bother them. But they had been banished. Four years passed. And more. Mildred had had enough. And she wrote a letter. And looking ahead, june 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that these convictions must be overturned. And the lovings were free to live in virginia, go public, permanent free. And richard now built the house, a brick house, it still stands there. The one he had meant to start nine years earlier. Now he could. And did. The ruling in that case transformed the law of the land. In ways that reverberate down to the present. Those are the core facts. But its not where i started writing this book. I started it at the end of course. I went to mildreds funeral. It was an extraordinary weekend. I went back to blacksburg. Drove back up the mountain, kicked on the computer, started writing and 5,000 words later leaned back and i thought that pretty much captures mildred, how shes been understood, the events of the weekend. And how a lot of people whose lives had intersected with hers had come to know her and what they had to say. I looked at the book and it looked like an epilogue. The epilogue comes at the end of a book. Then you have to write the book. You have to write the book before the epilogue can do the work it was designed to do. Now i had already written an earlier book on interracial marriage, on race law and marriage. And it came out a dozen or so years ago, 2002. Tell the court i love my wife. I still like the title it may still be my favorite book. Im thinking i love all my children, but yeah, that may still be my favorite book. Those are the very words that the lovings attorney, told the justices of the Supreme Court that richard had told him to convey to the court, mr. Cohen just tell the court i love my wife. And that its just unfair that i cant live with her in virginia. The earlier book came out, good deal, good many years ago and i told the story there briefly. More fully than any of the other many stories i told of other couples across time and space from maine to california. From the 17th century, to the 20th. That was the story that gave the title to the book. Its the way i started the scene at the very beginning of the book and its where almost near the end i tell the story more detail. I thought when i finished the book that as with all my books, ive done that now. Ill go away and somebody else can come correct me or fill in the details or do whatever else. I thought maybe i was done and i pressed on to other big topics. That were also dear to my heart. But there was also this glimmer in the back of my mind that maybe somehow i would want to come back and tell a family history. Not just a legal history and not just bare bones, but a community, a family, a couple. And a case that they brought. Not all that stuff i had to do to situate their story in the first book. Enough, but only enough. I quoted in the first book from mrs. Loving. Words that she conveyed to me in our very first conversation. And then they made it into the first book, they made their way into the second book. I kept going back to the scrawl and discerning Something Else i had written down. I wasnt able to work it out what it was the first time. Its pretty graphic. Its pretty direct. Describing the scene. And then she went upstairs to her mothers bedroom. Sat on the bed, moms cant fix everything. Mom couldnt fix that. So maybe i would write another book. Mildreds funeral forced me to do it. Going to her funeral gave me the stuff. Got me started. I had an epilogue, i needed a book. Now my book emphasizes five main characters. Clearly richard and mildred. Weve already met them a little. Judge leon bazile, Hanover County up to caroline, you go through it on the way up to d. C. He had served as a Circuit Court judge since the year the u. S. Had entered world war ii. Back in the time of world war i, he had been working in the state Attorney Generals Office. And he would stay there for many years after he returned from the war. Then he served three terms in the house of delegates. This guy had been around. Within the realm of virginia politics. He had vast experience. And he left his imprint on Public Policy in any number of ways. He was a force. And he was a figure of some cultural dominance as well. He was a historian, he loved music, he did all kinds of stuff. But we dont know him for any of that. We know about him only because of about five words he uttered fairly late in his life. Right . And god almighty created the races. Well lets read the whole thing he wrote. Or the full passage that all thats ever given. Almighty god created the races, right, black, yellow, red and malay and he placed them on separate continents. That was deliberate, you know. And but for the interference with his arrangements, bazile never explained what he might mean by that, but for the interference with his arrangement there could be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. And so i suppose and we should guess that the state of virginia had a duty to enforce gods chosen design. Often misplaced, that statement is frequently said to have been voiced at the original trial in january 59. Normally you dont get a judge explaining the resolution to a case at that point. In fact, he actually wrote these words six years later. When the lovings had brought, successfully brought the case back into court and now he had, he had the obligation, he had the opportunity to explain in tremendous detail, these are 12 pages in longhand, they type out to about the same. Where he voiced, he articulates the history of the law of race and marriage. And he sees no possible basis on which that lovings could bring a successful case on constitutional grounds, the rules are clear. This is simply his punchline. And god almighty created the races. For my purpose today, though, the most striking thing about judge bazile is his own mixed marriage. Now the papers of judge leon bazile here at the Virginia Historical society include a just extraordinary collection over a period of years. Bazile had a problem. He had a prospective bride. She understood he loved her. She was pretty fond of him, too. But she insisted, month in and month out that leon, we can never be more than friends. We can never marry. Why . Its really important to know about bazile that hes from virginia. And that his prospective bride was from alabama. That cant be it. Okay, maybe this is it. Hes a catholic. And shes a baptist. And that caused huge problems. The only way they resolved these problems on his terms in the end, was when his draft notice came during world war i. And she came suddenly to recognize that he might well soon be going off to war and he might well not be coming back from war. And suddenly she recognized in a way she never had how just vital to her happiness he was. And they got married. So as a married man, he went off to france. Where his great grandparents had been born. So he is still a catholic, shes still a baptist, but now theyre married. Now i did bring a script, im checking it every once in a while. I want to be sure i dont leave out all the good stuff. I cant find one of those pages, so im going to have to rewrite it or have somebody bring it up to me in a hurry. One fairly recent account of the lovings story. One fairly recent account about the judge that he quote imposed the maximum penalty on the couple. Yeah i guess 25 is more than one to five. But as he saw it walking into the courtroom that day, he knew discretion ranged from a minimum of one year in the penitentiary to a maximum of five. That was it. If they were guilty, and it was hard to imagine that they werent, then that was the discretion he had. Yet what he did was exile them. He left them free. But only up to a certain extent. They werent free to stay married and in virginia they were free to stay married and in virginia, they just couldnt do both. But if he didnt impose the maximum, if he didnt even impose the minimum, then what was going through judge baziles mind that day . As i write in the book, im going to quote here, we can imagine judge bazile peering out at the scene in the courtroom and maybe he mused on his own mixed marriage and long happy family life. Once he and his bride broke through the barriers that their different religious faiths had posed. Perhaps the practice trigs leon bazile, even saw in the plebian richard loving, something of a kindred spirit. Not bound by other peoples rules of love and marriage, not deterred by big challenges in such matters. And finally the lovings two lawyers. Both came on the scene several years in. Between them, they put judge bazile in the fix that he found themself in when he had to justify the original sentence. And therefore invented the language we just heard. In june 1963, more than four years into their exile, we could consider it a promise of a fifth wedding anniversary present mildred gave to herself. She said, i got to get help. She had more than enough. She needed it fixed. Mom couldnt do that back then. Maybe somebody out there could. Who she wrote from her exiled home in d. C. Was Bobby Kennedy in a nearby office in the u. S. Attorney generals office. Could he help . Could the civil rights bill that was in congress at the time in 63, potentially help . And the letter came back, and she, we can imagine her opening it, looking at it, hopeful, apprehensive. Reading, no, cant help you. But you should talk to the people at the American Civil Liberties union. Maybe they can help. So short story this is how she comes to know bernard cohen. A very young lawyer who had no experience whatever in constitutional law cases. No experience whatever. Of in federal court. No experience doing a whole lot of things. But he had a credician and he was a enamored of mrs. Loving. He loved the name of the case that he saw potentially going to the u. S. Supreme court. And though he couldnt see how he could possibly win, he couldnt see how he couldnt, he possibly couldnt. It had to be a winnable case. Now he describes how he had to find a key to break through the door. That was locking him out. He found a key, turned out he needed another key. He just absolutely sometime stymied. Hes visiting with his old common law professor at his law program in d. C. What drove him to see his old professor was a new letter from mrs. Loving. Dear mr. Cohen. Hope you hadnt forgotten us, this has been a year since her first letter. So hes fairly desperate. But hes hopeful. The professor is a wizard, maybe hes got the solution. And maybe he does. Maybe he doesnt. But what happens that day is very different. Another even younger law student from the same professor, the same program, who had been off doing battle with the forces of the Civil Rights Movement in the deep south, he was in federal court all the time. He was on the front lines of the movement. He knew immediately what you do, you go into federal court. The two of them teamed up. Cohen made the case possible to that point. Hirschkoff makes it possible to carry it to a successful conclusion. All we know is that its summer 1964 and we found new possible way forward. Now if we fastforward to the case itself, well wrap back to it. They win, we know that, right . Im not with holding any vital information. And now they get to live the permanent, the new brick building, Central Point is their home once again, raise the kids on a farm out in the country. All of these things that mildred had dreamed about. Shes back with her mom and her dad, shes back with her cherished sister in particular. Shes back where she belongs. All is good and they live an idyllic existence and it lasts for a grand total of less time that they had been married, they thought, before the court said they were. Theyre heading home, she and her husband and her sister to Central Point one night. And they got run into. Now when mildred described it, the scene struck me. I knew that richard had died at the scene she said about the driver. That he jumped a stop sign so what i gather, that he jumped from the left side, right . But he do your homework. You go to the site and you look at it and say no, thats not where the road is coming in at all, its coming in from the right, but its almost headon. I dont think he jumped the stop sign. I think he never even slowed down for one. Slammed in, not quite headon. Mildred is seriously hurt. Richard is dead. Theyre free to live in Central Point for the rest of their lives she now is free to live in the house that richard built but without richard. Thats the first of the two downers that the film, the loving story