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Annotation Assignment - Pages Application
Directions: Please annotate the following article using the annotation key that was
presented in class. Please select the Smart Annotation tool in the Pages Application to
annotate the text. At the end of the article please write the central idea of the text in
the space provided.
June 12th Is Loving Day - Article | Annotation Assignment
Start Reading here -
When Richard and Mildred Loving awoke in the middle of the night a few weeks after
their June, 1958 wedding, it wasn't normal newlywed ardor. There were policemen with
flashlights in their bedroom. They'd come to arrest the couple.
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"They asked Richard who was that woman he was sleeping with? I say, I'm his wife,
and the sheriff said, not here you're not. And they said, come on, let's go, Mildred
Loving recalled that night in the HBO documentary The Loving Story.
The Lovings had committed what Virginia called unlawful cohabitation. Their marriage
was deemed illegal because Mildred was Black and Native American; and Richard was
white.
Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the couple
won.
Now, each year on this date, "Loving Day" celebrates the historic ruling in Loving v.
Virginia, which declared unconstitutional a Virginia law prohibiting mixed-race marriage
— and legalized interracial marriage in every state.
The couple is given a choice: flee or go to jail
After they were arrested, the Lovings were sentenced to a year in prison. Then, a judge
offered them a choice: banishment from the state or prison.
They chose to leave Virginia at the time, but after several years, the Lovings asked the
American Civil Liberties Union to take their case.
Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, two young ACLU lawyers at the time, did.
The ACLU takes up their case
The lawyers asked the court to look closely at whether the Virginia law violated the
equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. If the framers had intended to exclude
anti-miscegenation status in the 14th Amendment, which assures equal protection
under the law, they argued that it would have been easy for them to write a phrase
excluding interracial marriage, but they didn't Cohen argued:
The Lovings argue they just want the same rights
Cohen forcefully, but calmly argued that the Lovings and their children, just like any
other family, had the right to feel protected under the law.
When asked if he had a message for the justices, the normally-quiet Richard did: Tell
them I love my wife, he said.
The court makes a landmark ruling
On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in the Lovings' favor. The
unanimous decision upheld that distinctions drawn based on race were not
constitutional. The court's decision made it clear that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law
violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
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The landmark civil rights decision declared prohibitions on interracial marriage
unconstitutional in the nation.
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion for the court; he wrote that marriage is a
basic civil right and to deny this right on a basis of color is "directly subversive of the
principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment" and seizes all citizens
"liberty without due process of law."
In recent years, people around the country have commemorated the ruling with Loving
Day celebrations.
Today, it has evolved into an observation of the larger struggle for racial justice.
What is the Central Idea of the text?
Write here…
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