The Lovings

An Intimate Portrait

Barbara Villet

• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781616895563
• eBook ISBN: 9781616896126
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait documents the extraordinary love story of Mildred and Richard Loving. The Lovings presents Grey Villet's stunning photo-essay in its entirety for the first time and reveals with striking intensity and clarity the powerful bond of a couple that helped change history.Mildred, a woman of African American and Native American descent and Richard, a white man, were arrested in July 1958 for the crime of interracial marriage, prohibited under Virginia state law. Exiled to Washington, DC, they fought to bring their case to the US Supreme Court. Knowledge of their struggle spread across the nation, and in the spring of 1965, the Life magazine photojournalist Villet spent a few weeks documenting the Lovings and their family and friends as they went about their lives in the midst of their trial. Loving v. Virginia was the landmark US civil rights case that, in a unanimous decision, ultimately ended the prohibition of interracial marriage in 1967.

PART ONE: LOVE VS. THE LAW

As Mildred continued to explain to Villet and Wise during their initial meeting what had happened over the last several years, she unconsciously kept twisting her wedding band, as if to assure herself that it was still on her finger. Standing quietly apart and always intensely aware of fleeting signs of emotion, Villet caught the tensions of the moment on film. Richard, meanwhile, remained angrily silent, reluctant at first to make any comment on their situation. But over the following days, as Villet’s unobtrusive manner allowed him almost to disappear as he began photographing them, the Lovings were lulled into normalcy. What began to emerge before his lenses was a portrait of them as a quintessentially ordinary couple extraordinarily in love with each other. She was a stay-at-home mom; he was a laborer who supported his family with his hands and his back. Their experiences, means, and ambitions were limited to what they had always known: the simplicity of a close family life in rural Central Point, where they had grown up as part of a racially inclusive working class. Far from being civil rights activists, as they would often later be described, they were motivated entirely by perso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: A Quest for Justice
• Part One: Love Vs. The Law
• Part Two: The Law
• Part Three: An Escape to Freedom
• Part Four: Love
• Statement by Mildred Loving, 2007
• Dedication
• About the Authors