Mildred and Richard Loving

Virginia's one-drop rule, codified in law in 1924 as the Racial Integrity Act, required all residents to be classified as "white" or "colored", refusing to use people's longstanding identification as Indian among several tribes in the state.

Richard's father worked for one of the wealthiest black men in the county for 25 years.

Richard's closest companions were black (or colored, as was the term then), including those he drag-raced with and Mildred's older brothers.

"There's just a few people that live in this community," Richard said.

"A few white and a few colored. And as I grew up, and as they grew up, we all helped one another. It was all, as I say, mixed together to start with and just kept goin' that way."

The two first met when Mildred was 11 and Richard was 17.

He was a family friend of her brothers.

Years later, when she was in high school, they began dating.

When Mildred was 18 she became pregnant and Richard moved into the Jeter household.

At the time, interracial marriage was banned in Virginia by the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

Mildred later stated that when they married, she did not realize their marriage was illegal in Virginia but she later believed her husband had known it.

After their marriage, the Lovings returned home to Central Point.

They were arrested at night by the county sheriff who had received an anonymous tip, and charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth."

Mildred Delores Loving (née Jeter; July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975) were an American married couple who were the plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967).

On the 40th anniversary of the decision, she stated: "I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about."

They decided to marry in June 1958 and traveled to Washington, D.C., to do so.

They pled guilty and were convicted by the Caroline County Circuit Court on January 6, 1959.

They were sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state.

They moved to Washington, D.C., but missed their country town.

They were frustrated by their inability to travel together to visit their families in Virginia, and by social isolation and financial difficulties in Washington, D.C. In 1964, after their youngest son was hit by a car in the busy streets, they decided they needed to move back to their home town, and they filed suit to vacate the judgment against them so they would be allowed to return home.

In 1964, Mildred Loving wrote in protest to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional, for violating due process and equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment.

On June 29, 1975, a drunk driver struck the Lovings' car in Caroline County, Virginia.

Richard was killed in the crash, at the age of 41.

Mildred lost her right eye.

With the exception of a 2007 statement on LGBT rights, Mildred lived "a quiet, private life declining interviews and staying clear of the spotlight" after Loving and the passing of her husband.

Beginning in 2013, the case was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, including in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

Mildred Jeter was the daughter of Musial (Byrd) Jeter and Theoliver Jeter.

She was born and raised in the small community of Central Point in Caroline County, Virginia.

Mildred identified culturally as Native American, specifically Rappahannock, a historic and now a federally recognized tribe in Virginia.

(She was reported to have Cherokee, Portuguese, and African American ancestry.) She is often described as having Native American and African American ancestry.

Richard Loving was the son of Lola (Allen) Loving and Twillie Loving.

He was also born and raised in Central Point, where he became a construction worker after school.

He was European American, classified as white.

His father's maternal grandfather, T. P. Farmer, fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Caroline County adhered to the state's strict 20th-century Jim Crow segregation laws, but Central Point had been a visible mixed-race community since the 19th century.

Their marriage has been the subject of three movies, including the 2016 drama Loving, and several songs.

The Lovings were criminally charged with interracial marriage under a Virginia statute banning such marriages, and were forced to leave the state to avoid being jailed.

They moved to Washington, D.C., but wanted to return to their home town.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), they filed suit to overturn the law.