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“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

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This week, my husband, Tim, and I flew to the Pacific Northwest to celebrate one of my closest friends. She is marrying her true love, someone she has known for years, who takes her as she is. Because my friend is close in age to me, this is a mature couple. It is a mature first marriage.

And it is an interracial marriage. She is getting married on Thursday, June 12, and that’s not lost on me at all. It’s Loving Day.

Those of you who read my column on “Why I Got Married on Good Friday,” know that Tim and I are an interracial marriage, too. Loving Day is an important day for us.

Tim and Yvette married in 2017.

Loving Day is named for the couple who married in 1958, even though interracial marriage was against the law in Virginia, where they lived. They went across the border to wed in the District of Columbia, and when they returned home, Richard Perry Loving (white) and Mildred Delores Jeter (black and Native American) were arrested.

Their marriage was a crime punishable by one to five years in prison.

Before I even knew the date of my friend’s wedding, I knew of the Lovings as kind and gentle people who weren’t looking for fame, but rather love. Long after Richard’s death, I met Mildred and her family at a conference for multiracial families in Lansing, Michigan.

Mildred was soft-spoken but courageous about her love for Richard, which is why they took the risks they did.

Risking everything for love

After their arrest, a judge gave them a 1-year sentence and an opportunity: Agree to leave Virginia and not return for 25 years to avoid time in jail. They took it, moving to Washington, D.C. But they missed the rural life they knew and loved.

In 1963, recognizing a shifting culture in America, Mildred Loving wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy about their situation. His office suggested contacting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Then, the ACLU referred the Lovings to a lawyer named Bernard S. Cohen.

According to Lovingday.org, “At first, he worked alone on getting the trial judge to rehear the case. A year later, a chance meeting led to connecting with another young lawyer named Philip H. Hirschkop. Together they would appeal the Lovings’ case for years, and for free.”

The case went to the Supreme Court. The Lovings’ lawyers argued that the couple was denied equal protection under the law.

Richard Loving asked his lawyers to “tell the Court I love my wife and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

In a unanimous decision, the court struck down centuries of racist laws against interracial marriage and relationships. Nearly nine years after they were arrested, the Lovings won the right to live together as a family in the place they called home.

Acknowledging that the couple’s name, Loving, is a fitting tribute for what they fought for, just seems trite. It’s so much more than that. Jesus preached love: Love of God, Love of others.

On her wedding website, my friend posted this: “The Lovings’ memorable story (and fitting name), are part of a larger and continuing struggle for racial justice. Courtroom history led up to their case. Attitudes and demographics shape our society.”

A short film, “Loving Day,” was named an official selection at the 2025 American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes. It focuses on an interracial couple’s wedding plans, which take an unexpected turn when the Loving v. Virginia case is overturned.

I pray that day never comes.

Your sister in Christ,

Join the waitlist for the upcoming devotional journal, Beautifully Loved, for single, separated and divorced women.

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Yvette Walker is a journalist, educator and the founder of Positively Joy Ministries. Her ministry supports this blog, a podcast, publishing her many books and opportunities to share the message of joy.

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