You may know this story already from your history textbook; probably not though, since history can get pretty selective depending on who’s writing the syllabus. I didn’t learn about it until I was in law school, when I studied it in 1L Con Law (still better than having to learn about Tulsa from an HBO show). In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional, settling the case Loving v. Virginia, which made interracial marriage bans illegal across the United States. Talk about impact legislation—this didn’t just change Virginia or the lives of the Lovings, but changed everything about love in the country. It opened the door for Obergefell, nearly five decades later, embarrassingly long, yes, and now in danger, certainly. But Loving was the first blow struck for marriage equality in a long line of them and its legacy is still under fire now, a decade after Obergefell.
But behind those facts, behind that landmark case that took the United States closer to the continually unfulfilled promise of the nation, there were just two people in love that weren’t allowed to be. We’re here at the start of February, a month known for two things. A celebration of love and romance, albeit very Hallmark-y and manufactured in the form of holiday theming and special edition Reese’s hearts, and a celebration of Black history. And I can’t think of a better way to start this month off than with a movie, based on a true story, that celebrates both those things. Let’s get into Loving (2016).
We’re in Virginia in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, tells her boyfriend Richard Loving, a white man, that she’s pregnant. Richard is overjoyed—he loves kids and can’t wait to be a dad. His mother is a midwife, so he was raised in a home where babies were being born on the reg. He takes her out to a field, excited and babbling. Then it clicks for Mildred. Richard is talking about building a home for the two of them, just a short walk from where Mildred grew up and her family still lives. At this point in time, of course, interracial marriage was still illegal in Virginia, so Richard wanting to get married raised a big problem. But he figures out a way around that. They head to Washington, D.C. to get married and they do, married by a judge. When they get home, Richard frames and hangs their marriage license in their bedroom. I thought this was a sentimental decision and maybe it was, like hanging a degree, but it turned out to be a more practical choice than I thought, whatever the sentiment may have been.
As it turns out, even though they were married in D.C., Virginia still doesn’t take too kindly to interracial marriage and one night they burst through the door to arrest them. Richard quickly points to the marriage license on the wall, but the police tell him that the D.C. license isn’t valid in Virginia and throws them both in jail. Mildred is heavily pregnant at this time. But that doesn’t matter. A cold jail cell with no chance at bail until after the weekend when Richard is able to be bailed out immediately, that’s where they put her.
On his way out, the Sheriff has a talk with Richard. Sheriff Brooks is so gentle in the way he speaks to Richard that it almost takes a moment to realize exactly what he’s saying. He’s so polite, even bordering on kind in the way he opens his conversation with Richard that it’s not until the second he tells him that it’s god’s law to maintain racial purity that you realize just what a horrible person he is. This is the most insidious kind of in-plain-sight evil. The righteous hate, espousing such horrific nonsense with the full and honest believe that they are in the right. That their evil is holy. When most people do wrong, they know it. They know it and they do it anyway, for whatever reason it may be, justified or not. But this kind of evil can throw a pregnant woman in a solitary cell and call it sanctified. They think this hate, this inhuman darkness is what makes them good. This is the kind of belief that is so hard to be reasoned with because it lives outside the confines of basic human decency and in the realm of a fantastical masquerade where hate is godly and any good message a religion has is perverted to serve their twisted stances. It’s disgusting.
Ultimately, they plead guilty to such crimes as unlawful marrying and cohabitating as man and wife “against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth”. Remember, this was the law at the time. This was legal and the two of them being together was not. Law is not morality, just look at 55mph speed limits. One year, suspended sentence, predicated on the two of them leaving the state for 25 years. If they set foot in Virginia, they most certainly can’t be together. They have no other choice but to pack up and leave, moving to D.C. to live with relatives.
Mildred can’t find a moment’s peace. Growing up in rural Virginia, this isn’t anything like the life she is used to or ever wanted to live. The sounds of the cars driving by, the horns honking, the general din of the city; it’s all so much for her. I love the sound of the city at night; I can barely sleep if I don’t hear the sound of sirens in the distance. But for Mildred, the sounds are nigh unbearable; she lies awake at night thinking about the world she left behind, in which the sound of distant crickets were the only obstacle between you and a quiet night’s sleep. D.C. may be where they live, but it’s not their home. And when it comes time for their baby to be born, she desperately wants Richard’s midwife mother to deliver the baby because that’s how she always envisioned it. On the surface, asking your husband to smuggle you into another state like moonshine in the 1920s so you can give birth in your mother-in-law’s living room seems like a wildly unnecessary risk, but when you think about it, is it anywhere near as unreasonable as the rule that would keep them from it? So their child could be brought into the world among a loving family rather than a large, scary hospital? Risking prison, risking losing the child to the system. The risk is so incredibly high. I’d never risk it. But it should never have come to this in the first place; this never should have been a decision that had to be made. The absurdity of racial purity being enforced by the state should be horribly revolting to any decent person, of any creed or religion, or absence thereof. It’s plain. It’s obvious. To any decent person.
Of course that’s not how it goes in Virginia in the 1960s and the Lovings manage the luckiest of escapes. Ever so cruelly, life goes on. They keep trying to make a life in the city. They have two more kids, jobs, friends. But it’s never home. In the meantime, someone you may have heard of marches from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery and the Civil Rights Movement is well underway. The ACLU gets involved and the Lovings put their case right into the Virginia court system. The rest of it, as they say, is well and truly history.
Not only is this an important story to be telling—as important in 2016 as it is now in 2026–it’s also a great movie. Joel Edgerton (The Gift, Zero Dark Thirty) plays Richard Loving so well; Richard was a regular man who wanted regular things and Edgerton plays him with such an emotional honesty. He just wants to build a life together with Mildred; a home for them and their family built with his own two hands, peacefulness, and happiness. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Sheriff Brooks is played by Marton Csokas (The Lord of the Rings) and so incredibly effectively. It was like poison dripped from his fangs every time he opened his mouth, it was so satisfying to hate him with every fiber of my being. Phenomenal acting job. The ACLU attorneys who represent the Lovings are played shockingly well by comedian Nick Kroll (Big Mouth, my favorite episode of Brooklyn 99) as Bernie Cohen and Jon Bass (Baywatch the reboot) as Phil Hirschkop. But they’re far from the stars of the show, they’re not even white knights here to deal with a poison pill. Kroll is kind of an animal; he seems to really want to make a name for himself and is happy for Richard and Mildred to be his ticket to ride. Bass is more measured, more savvy than Kroll, but his role is also smaller, so it makes less of an impact. The lawyers aren’t the heroes here, this isn’t Bridge of Spies, but they are important.
But the star of the show here is Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving. You’ve seen her before in shows like Agents of SHIELD and Preacher, and despite the fact neither of those shows are very good, her performances in them were always among the best parts. And that tradition continues because she is so incredibly powerful here. Ruth Negga plays Mildred with such quiet strength and dignity, it’s a performance that is subtle and captivating. She draws you in, pulls your attention to her, and keeps it there every time she’s on screen. The sheer strength of her performance is nearly impossible to overstate. Mildred’s bravery is on full display through her incredibly talented acting ability. As good as Joel Edgerton is as Richard, Ruth Negga is flawless as Mildred in a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (losing out to Emma Stone in La La Land, which I couldn’t sit through).
There’s a lot in this movie. And just like Casablanca and even The Running Man, it’s sadly still relevant now, ten years after the movie released and the better part of six decades after the landmark court decision. But what this movie isn’t, and thank goodness for that, is a courtroom drama. What makes it so effective as a narrative is the human aspect of the film. A courtroom drama can be loads of fun to watch and properly nail-biting as well, but you can look that up. You can read the court opinion, you can read the case brief, you can read the Wikipedia entry. This movie isn’t about a landmark Supreme Court case. It’s a movie about two people who fell in love with each other at a time in the United States when their love was illegal because of something so horrendously stupid as their races. I don’t want to live in a nation where consenting, loving adults are banned from being with each other because of other people’s prejudices. Can you imagine living in a country that calls itself free while its government tells you who you are allowed to love on the basis of race or sexual identity? What kind of backwards nation would do something like that? By focusing on the story of two people who are just trying to get through an already difficult life together, Loving humanizes their struggle rather than locking it behind dense legalese and civil procedure. It takes it from a film about a fact and turns into a story about poeple. You see their love for each other and their children, you see the fear they live in when a pair of headlights in the distance behind you grow larger and they worry that it’s at best the police coming to arrest and separate them or at worst a lynch mob coming to kill them. To fear for your life because of who you love. What a horrible world that would be.
The message of Loving is incredibly straightforward and it’s exemplified by one single moment. When going to argue in front of the Supreme Court on their behalf, Bernie Cohen asks Richard if there’s any message he wants to pass along to the Justices. He says simply to tell them that he loves his wife. Because what other argument could there possibly be? A man who loves his wife. A woman who loves her husband. Two people who love each other and their family. What does it matter what color their skin is or anything else beyond the fact that they’re adults who care for each other? Loving is 2 hours and 3 minutes long and currently available to stream on Prime Video. And it’s an important two hours and three minutes to spend; a length of time that celebrates with its soft, but strongest voice the power of love and the power of equality. And the sacrifices one couple made so the rest of us can live and love a little more freely.
