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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I am Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry and

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Speaker 1: we are going to talk for this episode and another episode.

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Speaker 1: So a two parter about a court case that has

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Speaker 1: been in the news a lot lately, and that is

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Speaker 1: the case of Loving versus Virginia. Indeed, it's been discussed

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Speaker 1: often because there we're in the midst of another legal

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Speaker 1: battle in the US and it's actually going on in

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Speaker 1: other countries as well about marriage equality and so where

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Speaker 1: you find ourselves often looking back at previous cases that

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Speaker 1: have gone to the Supreme Court right and this particular

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Speaker 1: one has been cited explicitly pretty often in the ongoing

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Speaker 1: debate that's before the Supreme Court as we record this,

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Speaker 1: and it's about Richard and Mildred Loving. They were a

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Speaker 1: couple whose relationship took them all the way to the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Richard was white and Mildred was African American

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Speaker 1: and Native American, and when they got married in nine

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Speaker 1: fifty eight, it was illegal for them to be married

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Speaker 1: in Virginia, where they live, and it was also illegal

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Speaker 1: and twenty four other states at that time. The Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court's ruling overturned their conviction and avoided all the antim

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Speaker 1: assassination laws that were still in existence in sixteen states

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Speaker 1: at that point and in the greater context of the

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement. Mildred and Richard got married after Brown

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Speaker 1: versus Board of Education outlied school segregation, after the Montgomery

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Speaker 1: bus boycott, and before the Greensborough lunch counter sit ins.

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Speaker 1: Their legal battle to return home to Virginia began after

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Speaker 1: a series of enforced school and university integrations and not

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Speaker 1: long after the assassination of civil rights leader Mega Evers.

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Speaker 1: The school and university integrations actually played a pretty big

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Speaker 1: part and and maybe some of the Supreme Court's reluctance

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Speaker 1: to talk about this issue, which we'll talk about a

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Speaker 1: little bit more in the second part. So we're gonna

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Speaker 1: tell this story in two parts. Today's part talks about

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Speaker 1: the Lovings themselves, how it is that they wound up

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Speaker 1: before the Supreme Court, as well as the legal context

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Speaker 1: of race and marriage at the time. And then in

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Speaker 1: the second part of this story we'll get into the

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Speaker 1: actual Supreme Court proceedings. They're a whole lot easier to

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Speaker 1: make sense of when you understand sort of the legal

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Speaker 1: context of what was going on at the time and

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Speaker 1: the laws that had been on the books in the past.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna start talking about Richard and Mildred. Yes,

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Speaker 1: indeed so. Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Dolores Jeter grew

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Speaker 1: up in Central Point, Virginia, which is north of Richmond.

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Speaker 1: The area had a reputation for being relatively laid back

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Speaker 1: in terms of race relations, the kind of place that

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Speaker 1: people just wanted to be left alone and leave one

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Speaker 1: another alone. It had a very live and let livement lady.

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Speaker 1: They had known each other since she was eleven and

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Speaker 1: he was seventeen, but they hadn't gone to the same

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Speaker 1: schools because the schools were segregated. Their families had been

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Speaker 1: friends and neighbors. Richard's mother was a licensed midwife, and

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Speaker 1: she eventually delivered their three children, who were named Peggy, Donald,

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Speaker 1: and Sydney. And Richard and Mildred decided to marry after

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Speaker 1: Mildred found out she was expecting a child. He was

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Speaker 1: a bricklayer and was twenty four and she was eighteen.

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Speaker 1: Her mother was part Rappahannock Indian and her father was

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Speaker 1: part Cherokee. She generally identified herself as Indian, but under

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Speaker 1: Virginia law she was classified as negro or black. So

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Speaker 1: on June tewod N eight, they got married in Washington,

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Speaker 1: d C. Which was about a hundred miles away from

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Speaker 1: where they lived. They had gone to d C to

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Speaker 1: get married because it was illegal in Virginia for a

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Speaker 1: white person to marry someone of another race. Mildred did

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Speaker 1: not know this. It was also in illegal in Virginia

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Speaker 1: for a couple to go somewhere else in order to

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Speaker 1: get married and then come back to Virginia. Richard did

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Speaker 1: not know that part, so both of them were unaware

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Speaker 1: of some of the law that was governing their relationship

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Speaker 1: at that point. So back in Central Point, at two

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Speaker 1: am on July eleven, Caroline County, Virginia Sheriff our Garnet

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Speaker 1: Brooks and two deputies entered the bedroom where the now

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Speaker 1: married couple were sleeping after following an anonymous tip. This

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Speaker 1: is sort of the one red flag of the live

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Speaker 1: and let live leave one another alone that has really

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Speaker 1: come up and in terms of the community in this story,

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Speaker 1: h The sheriff asked them what they were doing together,

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Speaker 1: and Richard pointed to the marriage certificate that was hanging

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Speaker 1: on the wall, at which point they were arrested for

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Speaker 1: breaking Virginia's anti missagination laws. Just as a side note,

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Speaker 1: the word misagynation has a first known use of eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty three, and it was in common use by the

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four presidential election and pamphlets that were made

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Speaker 1: by opponents of Abraham Lincoln, so it was used as

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Speaker 1: sort of a fear stoking technique. It was sort of

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Speaker 1: the the eighteen sixties version of the slippery slope. If

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Speaker 1: slaves were freed, the misgenation was the next inevitable step,

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Speaker 1: So it was a sort of a word that was

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Speaker 1: coined in light of the battle over slavery in the

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Speaker 1: United States. So Richard was released on bail after spending

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Speaker 1: the night in jail following the arrest. Mildred was denied

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Speaker 1: bail and actually had to stay in jail for four

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Speaker 1: days until their hearing. Because of Virginia law, they were

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Speaker 1: required to live apart, so Mildred and Richard each lived

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Speaker 1: with their parents. Their hearings took place in Bowling Green, Virginia,

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Speaker 1: and Richards was on July seventy eight and Virginia's was

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Speaker 1: on October thirteenth of that year. They each pleaded not

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Speaker 1: guilty to the charges against them. Judge Edwards, still the third,

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Speaker 1: rejected their please and sent the case to the grand

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Speaker 1: juror re But before they could appear before the grand jury,

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Speaker 1: Mildred actually gave birth to a baby boy. Their lawyer,

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Speaker 1: Frank Beasley, advised both of them to plead guilty, and

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Speaker 1: his hope was that the judge would be lenient on

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Speaker 1: them if if they entered a guilty plea. So on

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Speaker 1: January six, nifty nine, Judge Leon M. Basil found Richard

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Speaker 1: and mild and Mildred guilty. He sentenced them to a

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Speaker 1: year in prison, but he suspended the sentence that they

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Speaker 1: would move out of the state and live somewhere else

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Speaker 1: for twenty five years, so he effectively banished them from

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Speaker 1: the state of Virginia. They could each visit Virginia, but

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Speaker 1: not together. They couldn't enter the state together, and they

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Speaker 1: couldn't be together within the state, so they went to

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Speaker 1: live with Mildred's cousin in Washington, d c. Mildred went

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Speaker 1: back home to Virginia for the births of two more children,

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Speaker 1: but Richard couldn't be there with her for them, and

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Speaker 1: they really weren't happy living in Washington, d c. They

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Speaker 1: wanted to be able to go home together at least

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Speaker 1: to visit their ends and family, and they didn't have

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Speaker 1: a lot of money, so they couldn't afford an attorney

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Speaker 1: to appeal their case or try to fight the court order.

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Speaker 1: Mildred's cousin suggested that she right to Robert F. Kennedy,

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Speaker 1: who was the U. S. Attorney General at the time,

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Speaker 1: thinking that he might be able to lift the court

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Speaker 1: order against them, and Robert F. Kennedy's advice was that

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Speaker 1: they contact the American Civil Liberties Union. On June twentie,

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, Mildred wrote a letter to the a

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Speaker 1: c LU to ask them for help, and one line

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Speaker 1: of it read, we know we can't live there, but

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Speaker 1: we would like to go back once in a while

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Speaker 1: to visit our families and friends. She was not aware,

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Speaker 1: neither of them were aware of exactly how big of

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Speaker 1: a battle that letter was going to launch. One of

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Speaker 1: their lawyers from the a c l U was named

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Speaker 1: Bernard or Bernard Cohen, and uh Cohen's explanation of this

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Speaker 1: was they just were in love with one another and

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Speaker 1: wanted the right to live together a husband and wife

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Speaker 1: in Virginia without any interference from officialdom. When I told

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Speaker 1: Richard that this case was in all likelihood going to

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Speaker 1: go to the Supreme Court of the United States, he

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Speaker 1: became wide eyed and his jaw dropped. So what we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about next is the sort of the legal

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Speaker 1: backstory that you need to have in your minds once

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Speaker 1: we actually get to the Supreme Court. A lot of

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Speaker 1: these are pretty difficult cases, and you know, they involve

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Speaker 1: actual people, which is one of the things that makes

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Speaker 1: this kind of hard to talk about. I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of times when you read the legal synopsis of

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Speaker 1: of Supreme Court arguments, the people involved are kind of

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Speaker 1: left out, or at least I think obscured. It's a

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Speaker 1: much smaller role. And so a lot of the cases

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Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about, we were going to

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Speaker 1: talk about who these people are and why this mattered

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Speaker 1: to them. So this was obviously a pivotal moment in

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Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, but it didn't happen in isolation.

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Speaker 1: It followed a really long history of laws and court

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Speaker 1: challenges that had already happened in the United States starting

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Speaker 1: as early as the colonies. Uh, these aren't the only

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Speaker 1: cases in laws that were cited in the context of

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Speaker 1: Loving versus Virginia, but these are all particularly notable ones.

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Speaker 1: So we started in sixteen sixty one when Virginia was

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Speaker 1: the first colony to pass a ban on interracial marriage,

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Speaker 1: and then we're going to hop forward to the Civil

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Speaker 1: War and the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, was part of reconstruction, and it granted citizenship

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Speaker 1: to everyone born or naturalized in the United States and

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Speaker 1: also stated that states could not deprive any person of life, liberty,

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Speaker 1: or property without due process of law, nor deny any

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Speaker 1: person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So,

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Speaker 1: according to the Fourteenth Amendment, both the federal government and

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Speaker 1: state governments must give all citizens equal protection and due process,

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Speaker 1: and all people born in the United States or naturalized

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Speaker 1: were citizens. In eighteen seventy eight, Virginia made it illegal

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Speaker 1: for people of different is to leave the state and

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Speaker 1: mary elsewhere and then return. In the same year, the

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Speaker 1: Virginia Supreme Court issued a decision and Kenny versus the Commonwealth,

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Speaker 1: which was the case of a white man who had

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Speaker 1: been living with a black woman. Similarly, they had gone

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Speaker 1: to Washington, d c. To get married because they couldn't

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Speaker 1: get married in Virginia, which meant that their marriage was

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Speaker 1: invalid in Virginia. So the court upheld their guilty verdict

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Speaker 1: in Kenny versus Commonwealth, and in this decision the Court

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Speaker 1: called interracial marriages quote so unnatural that God and nature

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Speaker 1: seemed to forbid them. The Kenny Versus Commonwealth ruling also

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Speaker 1: cited an eighteen seventy eight bigamy case Reynolds versus United States.

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Speaker 1: In this case, George Reynolds, who was Brigham Young's secretary,

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Speaker 1: had been found guilty of bigamy. He was Mormon, and

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Speaker 1: he challenged the federal government's anti bigamy laws, arguing that

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Speaker 1: they violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.

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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court upheld states rights to handle their own

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Speaker 1: marriage laws. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Morris R.

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Speaker 1: Waite said, quote, it is impossible to believe that the

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Speaker 1: constitutional guarantee of religious freedom was intended to prohibit legislation

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Speaker 1: in respect to this most important feature of social life.

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Speaker 1: The ruling was at the First Amendment protected belief, not

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Speaker 1: religious practices. That were criminal in this case bigamy. In

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Speaker 1: eighty three, Pace versus Alabama focused on the relationship between

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Speaker 1: Tony Pace, who was black, and Mary Jay Cox, who

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Speaker 1: was white. They were living together but not married. The

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court upheld the law itself, which prohibited relationships between

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Speaker 1: unmarried people, including unmarried people of different races, But the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court also found that the penalty was different for

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Speaker 1: couples of the same race versus interracial couples, and that

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Speaker 1: aspect was viewed as unconstitutional. So in Pace versus Alabama,

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court upheld antim assasination laws as long as

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Speaker 1: the punishment didn't differ in how severe it was for

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Speaker 1: full of different races. Then, in the early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: as immigrants of various races and ethnicities were coming into

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Speaker 1: the United States, many states actually passed laws prohibiting in

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Speaker 1: interracial relationships, and the federal government pass laws banning or

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Speaker 1: restricting the number of immigrants from specific countries. There was

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Speaker 1: a really increasing focus on the idea of racial purity,

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Speaker 1: especially on the racial purity specifically of white people, and

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Speaker 1: that meant that the country are the states that were

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Speaker 1: passing these laws also had to define who counted as

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Speaker 1: quote white, So in Virginia the law became increasingly narrow

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Speaker 1: about who was classified as a white person. Before nineteen ten,

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Speaker 1: anyone with or more African blood was considered to be black.

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Speaker 1: That dropped to fifteen in nineteen ten, and then the

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Speaker 1: one drop rule came under the Racial Integrity Act of

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four, So in Virginia it became more and

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Speaker 1: more act of who was classified as a white person

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Speaker 1: under state law. Under the Racial Integrity Statute, Section fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: marriages between white and quote colored people were a felony.

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Speaker 1: Both parties could be sentenced to between one and five

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Speaker 1: years in prison, and in section eight, inter racial couples

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Speaker 1: who were living in Virginia who married in another state

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Speaker 1: and then returned to Virginia faced the same penalty because

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Speaker 1: they were leaving the state to evade the law. These

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Speaker 1: are the two sections of the Racial Integrity Statute that

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Speaker 1: Richard and Mildred Loving had been charged with and had

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Speaker 1: pled guilty to breaking. Many states had repealed their anti

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Speaker 1: missaggenation laws by the time the Loving case actually made

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Speaker 1: it to the Supreme Court. Antimissagenation laws had been struck

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Speaker 1: down in California, Nevada and Arizona in the late nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifties after court cases there. However, sixteen states, all of

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Speaker 1: them southern or bordering on Southern states, still outlawed into

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Speaker 1: racial marriages, and all of these sixteen misgenation codes had

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Speaker 1: been upheld by lower courts. So we talked a little

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Speaker 1: bit earlier about how a lot of this was going on.

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Speaker 1: After Brown versus the Board of Education outlawed school segregation,

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Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court had declined to hear several

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Speaker 1: cases that were related to interracial marriage in the years

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Speaker 1: leading up to Loving versus Virginia. It seemed to outside

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Speaker 1: observers that in the aftermath of Brown versus the Board

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Speaker 1: of Education, when there had been a violent backlash, when

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Speaker 1: law enforcement had had to force schools to integrate all

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Speaker 1: kinds of demonstrations and killings, that the court just seemed

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Speaker 1: reluctant to get into the idea of race relations in

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Speaker 1: the South. But not long before being presented with the

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Speaker 1: Loving case, the Supreme Court had heard the case of

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Speaker 1: McLaughlin versus Florida. In question was Florida Statute seven nine

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Speaker 1: eight point zero five, which stayed quote any Negro man

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Speaker 1: and white woman or any white man and Negro woman

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Speaker 1: who are not married to each other, who habitually live

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Speaker 1: in and occupy in the nighttime the same room, shall

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Speaker 1: each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or

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Speaker 1: by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars. There was no

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Speaker 1: similar law in Florida for couples of the same race.

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Speaker 1: There were other laws outlawing adultery and lewd cohabitation, but

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Speaker 1: these required proof for conviction, and seven nine eight point

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Speaker 1: zero five did not. The case actually went before the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court in December of nineteen sixty four, and although

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Speaker 1: it didn't apply to antim assassination laws as a whole,

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Speaker 1: the court unanimously struck down the Florida law requiring different

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Speaker 1: proof based on race violated the equal protection clause of

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Speaker 1: the Fourteenth Amendment. It was while the McLaughlin case was

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Speaker 1: being prepared that Mildred's Mildred Loving's letter arrived at the

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Speaker 1: a c l U. The a c LU had been

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Speaker 1: on the lookout for cases that would help them take

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Speaker 1: down the antim degenation laws, and that is where we're

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Speaker 1: going to stop with Part one. That's the context for

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Speaker 1: what was going on in the world and what was

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Speaker 1: going on in the law leading up to the actual

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court hearing, which we will talk about in the

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Speaker 1: next episode. Do you also have listener mail? I do,

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Speaker 1: and it is just coincidentally. It's a completely apt email

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Speaker 1: to go with this episode today. It came in over

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Speaker 1: the weekend. It's from Zelda. Zelda says Holly and Tracy. Recently,

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Speaker 1: the new Bioshot game came out for PS three, Xbox

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Speaker 1: and PC and a lot of people have gotten really angry.

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Speaker 1: Why well, it takes place in nineteen twelve and acknowledges

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Speaker 1: the horror and amount of racism during that time. While

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Speaker 1: I'm busy with school, so I haven't played it myself yet.

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Speaker 1: From what I've seen, it's a balanced representation of nineteen twelve. However,

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of people aren't really aware of

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Speaker 1: the extent of racism at that time, even in the North.

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Speaker 1: I would love to see, or here rather an episode

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Speaker 1: about an individual who overcame racism in the nineteen tens, twenties,

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Speaker 1: and thirties. So what does this have to do with

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court? Third, Good Marshal, my favorite historical lawyer

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Speaker 1: and Supreme Court Justice was born in nineteen o eight

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Speaker 1: and had to deal with this kind of racism during

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Speaker 1: his youth and much of his adulthood. I think he

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Speaker 1: would be a great podcast subject, especially in light of

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Speaker 1: controversy in one of America's favorite video game franchises. Thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for your fantastic work. I look forward

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Speaker 1: to hearing the next episode. So first, thank you, Zelda. Second,

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Speaker 1: when this email arrived, I was playing BioShock Infinite UM

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Speaker 1: and I was not aware at how many people on

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Speaker 1: the Internet were really angry about BioShock Infinite and calling

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Speaker 1: the game racist because it depicts racism. Uh, and it

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Speaker 1: does depict racism in a really blunt and frank and

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Speaker 1: shocking way. One of the very first things that you

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Speaker 1: have to do in the game is make a decision

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Speaker 1: between just a horror fine to me racist act and

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Speaker 1: the not racist act, which is also I haven't played

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Speaker 1: it yet, but that's the other option is also horrifying,

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Speaker 1: right there. Well, either one is you're you're going to

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Speaker 1: throw a baseball at someone, right and you get to choose,

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Speaker 1: or you're gonna throw the baseball at an interracial couple,

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Speaker 1: or are you going to throw the baseball at the

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Speaker 1: announcer who's raffling off the choice to throw the baseball.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's an upsetting thing. It was a thing

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Speaker 1: where I paused it and was like, what is going on? Um?

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Speaker 1: And there's a lot when you're walking around the world

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Speaker 1: of BioShock Infinite there there are like propaganda posters. There's

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Speaker 1: also pretty early in the game. Bathrooms are a big

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Speaker 1: thing in the BioShock frantise. You're like always in these

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Speaker 1: trainspotting bathrooms in BioShock and the train spotting bathrooms and

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Speaker 1: BioShock are the ones that are labeled for colored and Irish.

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Speaker 1: It's upsetting, and it's a it's upsetting to a modern player.

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Speaker 1: And then they are people who who are interpreting this

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Speaker 1: as racist. My argument is that depicting something is not

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Speaker 1: the same as endorsing it, and it's pretty clear in

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Speaker 1: the context of the game that racism is bad. I

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Speaker 1: went I went looking around trying to find historical propaganda posters,

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Speaker 1: uh to kind of compare to what's in BioShock, because

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Speaker 1: he knew that a lot of them have historical routes.

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Speaker 1: But I have not yet found the examples that I found.

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Speaker 1: The examples from later from like World War Two. There

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Speaker 1: are some really stunningly racially charged World War Two posters

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Speaker 1: of propaganda from the United States. Um so yes, thank

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Speaker 1: you very much Selda for sending this. It's uh, I

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Speaker 1: think particularly relevant to both the game and what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about in this episode. Today. Holly and I were talking,

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Speaker 1: I think yesterday about how the view of the civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement that many people learn in schools is very

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Speaker 1: same tis Yeah, it's similar to what you said earlier.

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Speaker 1: When we're discussing and learning it, particularly in school, when um,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's often being presented as facts to remember,

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Speaker 1: we lose track of the actual people that were involved

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Speaker 1: and affected and suffering in many cases, and so it's

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Speaker 1: it's easy to not really think about the human condition

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Speaker 1: involved in some of these elements. Right. I have not

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Speaker 1: gotten to the end of BioShock Infinite yet, so I

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Speaker 1: can't really comment on how the story goes from beginning

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Speaker 1: to end. There are definitely things to be angry about

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Speaker 1: in that game. It's extremely violent and extremely gratuitously graphically violent.

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Speaker 1: But the racism, I think is presented in a way

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Speaker 1: that is horrifying. It's also reflective of the arrow when

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Speaker 1: the game is set well when it's the villain of

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Speaker 1: the piece, if I'm understanding correctly, because as I said,

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Speaker 1: I haven't played it yet. Right, the whole, like the

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Speaker 1: whole idea of white supremacy and American exceptionalism like those

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Speaker 1: are definitely villains in BioShock Infinite It. So yes, thank

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Speaker 1: you very much for that that suggestion and that ascute letter, Zelda.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can.

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Speaker 1: We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're

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Speaker 1: also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history class

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Speaker 1: stuff and on Twitter at missed in History. We have

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Speaker 1: recently launched a tumbler at mt in history dot tumbler

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Speaker 1: dot com and ron Pinterest. If you would like to

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Speaker 1: learn more about what we've talked about in this episode,

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Speaker 1: you can go to our website and put civil Rights

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Speaker 1: movement into the search bar and you will find how

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Speaker 1: the civil rights movement worked. You can do all of

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Speaker 1: that and more at our website with this how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. This episode

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Speaker 1: of Stuff You Missed in History Class is brought to

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