There is a very poignant scene toward the end of “The Loving Story,” an Augusta Films documentary premiering on HBO Feb. 14. Peggy Loving, about 8 years old, pages through a book of paper dolls. With scissors in hand, she happily points out a bride and groom who are dancing at their wedding. The tall, handsome groom wears a formal tuxedo. The bride, sporting a 1960s-style flip, wears white gloves and a long, flowing veil. They look into each other’s eyes as they dance; on the opposite page, honeymoon clothes with their paper tabs wait to be hung on cardboard shoulders.
Until 1967, the marriage of Peggy Loving’s parents wasn’t even recognized on paper. Weeks after their 1958 wedding in Washington, D.C., the county sheriff and two deputies burst into their rural Virginia home, arrested them and put them in jail. Their crime? Richard Loving was a white man. His wife Mildred was black and Native American. By marrying, they had violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, a law meant to prevent a mixing of the races. In lieu of a year-long prison sentence, the couple was banished from the state where they had grown up.
Students of the United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia know the details of the case. Mildred Loving sought the help of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who referred the couple to the American Civil Liberties Union. Two young ACLU lawyers then guided the Lovings through the maze of lower-court decisions, finally arguing their case before the highest court in the nation.
But filmmakers Nancy Buirski and Elisabeth Haviland James bring much more to the story. Through archival footage and new interviews, their documentary puts faces to facts and voices to victimization. We see Peggy Loving as her childhood self, but also as a daughter who looks back and understands the courage it took for her often reticent parents to defend their love and their family in such a public way.
Teaching Tolerance is proud to offer the teaching guide for “The Loving Story,” available Feb. 1. Its four lessons lead students through the civil rights context of the Lovings’ fight, the questions surrounding individual and states’ rights, the legal process that led to the Supreme Court decision and the importance of activism in bringing about necessary change.
“We don’t want to harm anybody,” Richard Loving told his lawyers. “We just want to live in peace.” His personal struggle to do that made a difference for countless couples to follow and offers an important lesson to students today.
Koenig is a freelance education writer and editor living in Texas.
Links:
[1] http://www.tolerance.org/author/darlene-koenig