2 October 2016 LOVING VS. VIRGINIA: A DOCUMENTARY NOVEL OF THE LANDMARK CIVIL RIGHTS CASE by Patricia Hruby Powell and Shadra Strickland, ill., Chronicle, February 2017, 260p., ISBN: 978-1-4521-2590-9

“I see your true colors

And that’s why I love you.”

--Cyndi Lauper

“Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

--Richard Loving to his ACLU attorney

Patricia Hruby Powell’s emotionally powerful verse novel LOVING VS. VIRGINIA is a satisfying true love story, in which equality and Constitutional rights triumph over prejudice and hate. This book left me with a hunger to learn more about the history of anti-miscegenation laws and other marriage-related statutes.

One of the many virtues of this wonderful “documentary novel” is the inclusion of a wealth of important factual matter as illustrations. These include such notable visuals as the text of the Fourteenth Amendment; the juxtaposition of two damning photos showing what “separate but equal” looked like in Virginia’s public schools; white supremacist quotes by George Wallace and Harry Byrd; the text of the actual Virginia anti-miscegenation statute; a photo from the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins; a quote from Reverend King’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, and an aerial photo of the 1963 March on Washington; a photo of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and quotations from the Virginia jurist’s white supremacist-grounded opinion in the Loving case which was reversed by the unanimous opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another enlightening illustration is a map of the United States showing the states with anti-miscegenation laws in 1958, when the Lovings got married. (They married in Washington, D.C., where there were no such laws.)

According to the map, my state of California did not have such a statute in 1958. That made me wonder whether California had ever had such a law. It turns out that in 1948, California became the first state in the nation to strike down an anti-miscegenation law,  when the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that a ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I also wondered about the history of laws in Virginia regarding same-sex couples, and why Virginia seems more progressive these days in comparison to some other southern states. It was interesting to learn what’s happened in a state that comes across in this book as backward and racist when these two wonderful young people fell in love in the 1950s.

“Then blinding light right in

my eyes.

I’m ready to scream

but Richard

spooned behind me

must have woke up

and pulled me tight

into his body--

which stops the scream.

Then a cruel voice

right over me says,

‘Who’s that woman

you’re

sleeping with?’

I can’t see who’s speaking

what with the light in my

eyes.

He’s talking to Richard,

of course.

Richard says nothing--

not sure he’s

even truly awake.

He just pulls me

tighter still.

‘I’m his wife,’ I say.

It makes me feel brave.

I’m his wife.

Richard lifts onto

his elbow,

takes his arm away

from me

to shield

the light

from his eyes.

Richard points to the marriage certificate

framed on the wall

behind us.

Beam of light leaves our faces

to shine on the certificate--

so I can see it’s Sheriff Brooks

and two deputies--

but I already knew that.

‘Not here she ain’t,’

says the sheriff.

‘Come on, get dressed,

let’s go.

I scurry up the stairs,

pull on yesterday’s dress.

The whole house is awake--

Mama, Daddy, Otha, Lewis, Garnet--

no one says a word.

They don’t dare.

Mama watches me go off

with the white men.

Get in their car.

Go to jail.”

What a great story! Richard Loving, who was white, was a childhood friend of the older brothers of Mildred Jeter, who was Black. Over time, Mildred grew from being just a little sister at Richard’s friends’ house into an adolescent who Richard grew fond of and courted.

Mildred’s siblings were supportive of the couple’s courtship, and the family was there for her and Richard through the decade during which they were in and out of jail for the crime of falling in love with someone of a different skin tone. Unfortunately, a sheriff who is a poor excuse for a human being plays an important part in the story, illustrating the cruelty of “the Southern way of life.”

For years, the Lovings and their three children were forced to live over the border in Washington, DC,  far from their families and Richard’s job. Finally they wrote to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, seeking help.  Kennedy referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, where a young attorney spent years taking their case through the state and federal systems, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

At this moment, when the direction of the U.S Supreme Court hangs in the balance, LOVING VS. VIRGINIA is a powerful example of how the decisions of the High Court can personally affect millions of Americans.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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