The Lovings
Hollywood is producing a new film about Richard and Mildred Loving, who were arrested in 1958 for violating a Virginia law prohibiting interracial marriage. Ruling on a lawsuit they filed in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws against mixed marriages.
In a press release, Governor Terry McAuliffe Thursday said, “Loving is a significant American story that should be told.” The film will be shot in the state, creating local jobs and highlighting “Virginia’s historical significance.”
I’m not sure that Jim Crow-era laws forbidding “miscegenation” is the kind of “historical significance” Virginia wants to bring attention to. But there is an opportunity, if McAuliffe will embrace it, to highlight how much Virginia has changed since the 1950s. According to the Pew Research Center, between 2008 and 2010 Virginia had the highest rate of black-white intermarriage of any state in the country. Of the 156,000 marriages involving whites in Virginia, 3.3% were with blacks. The only states that came close were North Carolina (3.2%) and Kansas (3.0%).
Let’s not let “Loving” give people the mistaken impression that Virginia is stuck in the 1950s. We’ve come a long way — longer than most. Let’s make sure we let people know it.
— JAB
