When I was growing up, my mother told me and my siblings that all the Lovings in America and throughout the world are related. William E. Loving was my grandfather. When he and my grandmother divorced, he moved back to Virginia.
I thought my mother was an only child, but W.E. Loving went on to have seven more children, a total of eight.
I met the youngest of W.E.’s children in the 1990’s. Her husband was doing the Loving genealogy, and they wanted to meet me. So we had a reunion in Lancaster, PA.
Some years later, I became aware of Loving vs the State Of Virginia, of the profound love story between Mildred and Richard Loving.
They were first arrested in 1958 for the then crime of interracial marriage, outlawed in Virginia. They exiled to Washington DC and fought to bring their case to the Supreme Court. They succeeded. And they won.
This case set a precedent for striking down the Defense Of Marriage Act, or DOMA, making marriage between LGBT couples legal. The ACLU was strategic in winning both cases, bringing both to the Supreme Court.
I recently became a member of the ACLU. It’s the least I can do, under the present circumstances gripping America. We have many battles to fight, and the ACLU has always been on the right side of history. May they continue to wage peace and speak truth to power, as is their way. May we the people support their efforts.
Another interesting Loving tidbit: Robert Duvall played my great great grandfather, Oliver Loving, in the mini-series, Lonesome Dove. Names were changed to protect the not so innocent. Lonesome Dove spiced the characters up. I doubt Oliver Loving was as colorful a character as Augustus McCrae–or was he? Thanks to the creative imagination, I can pretend he was.