National Loving Day commemorates a date in history when the Supreme Court of America ruled to disband all anti-miscegenation laws in 1967 (laws that made mixed-race marriages illegal).
How to Celebrate National Loving Day
If there was ever a day worth celebrating in style, it is National Loving Day. The name of the people involved in the first court case couldn’t be more appropriate. But what can regular people, like you, do to mark the occasion?
Watch a Film
One idea is to watch the film Loving, released in 2016. The production follows the lives – and struggles – of Richard and Mildred as they fight for justice. You see everything, from their initial encounter to their arrest on charges of being illegally married, to their move to Washington DC. You see how racism affected them and shaped their lives. And you get a sense of the tremendous cultural victory they won through their Supreme Court legal battle.
If you’re not a film buff, but you like documentaries, then you might want to check out the 2012 Loving Story – a short production that first featured on HBO. It shares some of the lesser-known details of the couple’s relationship and how their trials actually wound up strengthening their bond.
Attend an Event
Many communities across the world also mark National Loving Day with special festivals and events. In New York, for instance, multi-ethnic communities put on shows and organize large gatherings to celebrate the Supreme Court decision. They eat delicious food and dance to music.
You could also celebrate the day as millions of people do by cooking a backyard BBQ. It’s just a simple occasion with friends, family, and great food to honor the fact that love knows no bounds – racial or otherwise.
Share with Others
How you celebrate the day is entirely up to you. Many people will post supportive messages on social media or share content created by Ken Tanabe, the day’s founder. Others might want to pen a Facebook post discussing the reasons why people might want to celebrate the occasion. It’s entirely up to you.
National Loving Day marks a significant event in history. It commemorates the idea that no authority can dictate who can and who can’t love. It is a glorious victory for freedom and a big step forward in human rights for everyone affected by the decision. Couples like Richard and Mildred will certainly not be the last.
National Loving Day Timeline
Maryland’s First Colonial Ban
Maryland enacts the first known British North American law explicitly punishing marriages between white women and enslaved Black men, setting an early template for anti‑miscegenation policy in what becomes the United States.
Virginia Outlaws Interracial Unions
The Virginia colony passes a law forbidding marriages between “English or other white” people and Black or Indigenous people, and orders banishment for offenders, embedding racial hierarchy into early marriage regulation.
Reconstruction and Pace v. Alabama
In the post–Civil War era, many Southern states retained or reenacted interracial marriage bans; the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Pace v. Alabama (1883) upheld such laws, ruling that equal punishment for both partners does not violate equal protection.
Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act
Virginia adopts the Racial Integrity Act, strictly defining “whiteness” and criminalizing marriage between white people and anyone classified as “colored,” becoming one of the most influential and restrictive anti‑miscegenation statutes in the country.
California’s Perez v. Sharp
The California Supreme Court ruled in Perez v. Sharp that the state’s ban on interracial marriage violates the Fourteenth Amendment, making California the first state high court to strike down an anti‑miscegenation law on constitutional grounds.
UN Affirms Freedom to Marry Across Races
The United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose Article 16 recognizes the right of men and women to marry “without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion,” giving interracial couples a powerful new human rights framework.
Loving v. Virginia Legalizes Interracial Marriage Nationwide
In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that state bans on interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, invalidating remaining anti‑miscegenation laws in 16 states.
History of National Loving Day
Loving vs. Virginia was a critical Supreme Court case, but it was also the story of a real couple’s love. Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving grew up in Virginia, USA. They fell in love and decided to get married.
Regrettably, getting married was not that simple in 1958. Mildred was a young black woman and Richard, a respectable white male. The law forbade people of different races to marry each other, and this was true in many states – including Virginia. However, interracial marriages were legal in Washington, DC, at that time. Therefore, they decided to go to DC, get married, and return to Virginia to begin their life together.
This, however, was only a short term solution. The law in Virginia not only forbade interracial marriage ceremonies, but it also prohibited interracial couples from getting married elsewhere and then returning to their home state. Not long after their return to Virginia, the newly-married Loving couple was awakened by the police and taken to jail for the crime of having an interracial marriage.
Richard and Mildred went to trial, and the judge found them guilty and sentenced them to jail term three years. However, the Judge said that he would suspend the sentence if they agreed to leave Virginia for twenty-five years. Given the choice between imprisonment and banishment, they chose banishment, and the Lovings moved to Washington, DC to live out their married life.
Though the Lovings were able to live together legally in Washington, they did not have an easy time; they faced discrimination everywhere. They were facing emotional hardship with the separation from their families. Life was both difficult and horrible for the Lovings. In extreme anxiety, Mildred sent a letter to Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General of the United States, explaining their life and difficulties that they were facing as an interracial couple in Washington.
Mildred’s letter was sent on to the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. They took interest in the case and helped the Lovings find an attorney for their case. Two lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen, and Philip J. Hirschkop, also felt that not only the Lovings but all Americans were entitled to be married and to live in the state of their choice. Due to the difficulties that they faced they agreed to take on the case for free.
After a long and hard legal battle, the Lovings’ case eventually appeared before the United States Supreme Court. The Court decided after hearing the hardship that the Lovings faced and hearing about the many people that were unable to get married, the Court voted unanimously in their favor.
Ultimately, after nine years of struggle, the Lovings won the right to live together as husband and wife in their home state of Virginia. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides within the individual and cannot be infringed on by the State.”
Not only did the case win them their freedom to love each other, but it also granted the same freedom to every interracial couple in every state in the USA. At the time of the Loving case, sixteen states had laws prohibiting interracial couples from marrying.
Loving v. Virginia (1967) made it illegal for any state to enforce those laws which stop interracial marriage. These laws did not only apply to black and white people; in many states, restrictions on relationships with Asians, Native Americans, Indians, Hispanics, and other ethnic groups were abolished.
National Loving Day, therefore, is a celebration of the Supreme Court’s Decision in 1967 to prevent individual states, like Virginia, from preventing people from getting married because they are of different races. The original idea to dedicate a day in the calendar to honor this momentous decision came from Ken Tanabe. Ken was from a mixed-race family, having a Belgian mother and a Japanese father. He wanted to create a day that would celebrate multi-ethnic families and help bring people together.
For that reason, he launched National Loving Day in 2004 in honor of Richard and Mildred Loving, who first brought the court case. Since then, it has grown enormously in popularity, and now people all over the world celebrate it. The occasion is becoming increasingly relevant as global travel is making it easier for couples from different countries to get together and form relationships.
National Loving Day Facts
Interracial Marriage Once Carried Criminal Penalties and Long Prison Terms
For centuries, interracial relationships in the United States were treated as serious crimes rather than private choices. Colonial Virginia passed the first known statutory ban on interracial marriage in 1691, and by the early 20th century, roughly 30 states criminalized marriage between white people and those classified as Black, Asian, Native American, or “mulatto.”
Penalties could include multi‑year prison sentences, as in Virginia, where entering an interracial marriage was a felony punishable by up to five years in the state penitentiary.
Anti‑Miscegenation Bans Were Written Directly Into State Constitutions
Some states went so far as to embed interracial marriage bans into their constitutions, making them harder to repeal.
Florida (1885), Mississippi (1890), South Carolina (1895), and Alabama (1901) all adopted constitutional provisions explicitly prohibiting marriage between white people and those classified as nonwhite, tying white supremacy to the highest level of state law until these provisions were rendered unenforceable in 1967.
Federal Efforts to Ban Interracial Marriage Nationwide Repeatedly Failed
While most anti‑miscegenation laws were passed by states, members of Congress tried several times to impose a nationwide ban.
Proposed constitutional amendments in 1871, 1912–1913, and 1928 would have prohibited interracial marriage across the country, but none gained enough support to pass. These failed efforts show that, even at the federal level, some lawmakers sought to cement racial segregation in intimate life.
The Loving Decision Framed Marriage as a Fundamental Right Under the Fourteenth Amendment
When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia in 1967, it did more than strike down one state’s statute.
The Court unanimously held that Virginia’s interracial marriage ban violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, recognizing marriage as a “basic civil right of man” and a fundamental liberty that states could not restrict on the basis of race.
This reasoning later influenced arguments in other marriage‑equality cases.
Sixteen States Still Enforced Interracial Marriage Bans on the Eve of the Ruling
By the mid‑1960s, many states had already repealed their anti‑miscegenation laws, but large parts of the country still criminalized interracial unions.
At the time of the Loving decision, 16 states, concentrated mainly in the South, continued to enforce bans on interracial marriage. The 1967 ruling instantly rendered those laws unenforceable nationwide, although some remained on the books symbolically for decades.
Public Approval of Interracial Marriage Flipped from Overwhelming Rejection to Near Consensus
Attitudes toward interracial marriage in the United States have changed almost beyond recognition within two generations. In a 1958 Gallup poll, only 4 percent of Americans approved of marriages between Black and white people.
By 2021, Gallup found that 94 percent of U.S. adults expressed approval, a dramatic shift that reflects broader changes in racial attitudes and social norms since the civil rights era.
Interracial Marriages Have Grown From a Rarity to a Significant Share of New Unions
Interracial and interethnic marriages were extremely rare when legal barriers fell, but they have steadily increased as social attitudes changed.
In 1967, about 3 percent of U.S. newlyweds had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. By 2015, that share had risen to 17 percent, and by 2019 about 19 percent of new marriages were interracial, according to Pew Research Center and other demographic analyses.
