>> a landmark court case, loving versus virginia, ruled it was unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriage. up next on american history tv, author and professor peter wallenstein examines the context of loving versus virginia. he discusses the complexities of the case. the virginia historical society >> was not a white woman. richard loving, all agreed, was a white man. virginia state law not only rendered their 1958 marriage illegal, but also required a penalty of at least a year in prison for it. choset court judge leon to suspend their prison -- ifces is they agree they agreed to leave the state. after years of exile, loving sought legal assistance to let them return home to virginia.

today, our speaker will focus on the suit mr. and mrs. loving brought against the commonwealth, a case that made it to the supreme court. loving's challenge that the state could tell tito's people smb because they did not share the same racial identity, they could not marry me. explore tangled biographies in a breakthrough ruling in 1967. it can be her very clearly in the politics in jurisprudence of today. is a professorin of history at virginia tech, where he has taught for more than 30 years. before that, he taught in new york, canada, japan, and korea. as teaching has brought number of awards, including the alumni award for teaching excellence. as ais teaching role

distinguished teacher, he has long been a leading historian on the american south. "cradle of america" was a publication coming out at the 400th anniversary of virginia. "a history of virginia for "on publicers" and policy in 19th-century georgia and on conflict and change in 20 century virginia." his newest book, "race, sex, and .he freedom to marry" please join me in a warm welcome for peter wallenstein. [applause] peter: so, good afternoon. we already did that.

[laughter] so much for coming out today. a special thanks to the virginia historical society for hosting goodevent and for giving a home to one of the more important sources i used in constructing a portion of this book. i woke up, a little first. a bright light in the room. next to my bed. two, no, three men. the voice orctly the words she used to describe that experience, but it gives us an idea of the terror of that night. sudden intruders. it is a prologue to what comes after. the other day, iran across a

brand-new book, just last week, on the loving spirit it got the names right, richard and milford. [laughter] right.the kids names donald, peg me, -- peggy, and sydney. it just did not present them in the right order. get the factsto right on this story. we see time and again, books , phones,, obituaries time and again, the most elemental facts, they get wrong. i try to do it right. i try. story, mildred j -e-a-t-r. a lot of people, some white and some black.

mildred and richard loving. in our's drive northeast of here. in a part of the world, i remember first going there. there is a canopy of pine trees and they meet in the matter. the l a line has long since gone away. you know you have come upon a settlement. [laughter] imposing building, a baptist church mildred went to all her life. clues about the people in the itily is over the years, and has hiv racial constituency,

white, black, and indian. said, the couple got married. they went off to d.c. he thought they could get married in d.c. they probablyt ought to get married because mildred was pregnant or this was the 1950's. i did not make this up. somebody wrote dear abby back in ande days, before the bill, expressed concern about a member of the family who just had a after, she wrote back not to worry, the child was on time. [laughter] the wedding was late. [laughter] d.c. to dot off to what so many young couples did in those days. they got married and came back and all was well.

mildred, on her marriage license, racial identity -- indian. years later, she identified negro and partt indian pit that is how she described herself. it does notia law, matter, the details. nobody ever suggested richard was anything other than white. how could anyone actually know? not marry somebody who wasn't white. that moment that i opened up with, this teenage bride, late one night, not very far from here, some 57 years ago. without which, we would have no subject of today's talk, because

no one would have heard of the case. but here we are. in january of 1959, the talk game. -- came. 25 years, don't ever come back together during that time. so they moved back to d.c.. the law would not bother them. but they had been banished. for years passed, and more. mildred had had enough and she wrote a letter. 1967, theead, june supreme court of the united states ruled these convictions must be overturned and the lovings were free to live in virginia, go public, permanent, free. richard now built the house, a brick house that still stands there. the one that he had meant to start nine years earlier, he now could and did. the ruling in that case

transformed the law and the land. reverberate down to the present. those are the core facts. but it is not where i started writing the book. i started at the end. i went to mildred's funeral. was an extraordinary weekend. i went back to blacksburg, kicked on the computer and started writing. 5000 words later, i leaned back and thought, that pre-much captures mildred, how she has been understood, the events of the weekend, and how a lot of people whose lives had intersected with hers had come to know her and what they had to say. but i looked at what i just written and it looked a lot like an epilogue. you know what that means. the epilogue comes at the end of the book. then you have to write the book. [laughter] you have to write the book before the epilogue can do the work it was designed to do.

i had already written an earlier book on interracial marriage, on race, law, and marriage. it came out a dozen or so years ago. 2002. tell the court i love my wife. it may still be my favorite book. i still like the title. i am thinking, i love all my children, but yes, that might be my favorite book. , one ofe the very words the two lawyers, bernie cohen, told the justices of the supreme court that richard had told him to convey to court, just tell the court i love my wife and it is just unfair i cannot live with her in virginia. book came out a good many years ago and i told the story there briefly, more fully than in any of the other stories across time and space, from maine to california, from the 17th century to the 20th.

the story that gave the title to the book. it is the way i started the scene at the beginning, and it is a book where i tell the story in more detail almost at the end. i thought when i finished that book, that i had done that now and i will go away and someone will correct me and fill in the details or something else. i pressed on to other big topics. they were also do -- dear to my heart. a glimmer that maybe i would want to come back and tell a family history. not just a legal history and not just their bones. couple,ity, a family, a and a case. not all that stuff i had to do in order to situate their story, but enough come only enough. i quoted in that first book for mrs. loving, words that she

conveyed to me and our very first conversation. made it into the first book, the second book, and i kept discerning something else i had written down. i had not been able to work out what it was last time. it is pretty graphic, pretty .irect describing the scene. then she went upstairs to her mother's bedroom, sat on the bed, moms can't fix everything and mom could not fix that. so maybe i would write another book. mildred'soon forced me to do it. it got me started. i had an epilogue and i needed a book. my book emphasizes five main characters. clearly richard and mildred. we already met them a little. the judge, right next to caroline. go right through it on the way up to d.c.. he had served as a circuit court world wardge since

ii. he had not been in it since world war i, but asked -- back in the time, he had in working in the attorney general's office and would stay there for many years after he returned from the war. that he served three terms in the house of delegates. this guy had been around within the realm of virginia politics. he had a vast experience and left his imprint on public policy in any number of ways. he was a force. and he was a figure of some cultural dominance as well. he was a historian and love music. he did all kinds of stuff. we do not know him for any of that. we know him only because about five words he uttered. and god almighty created the races. let's read the whole thing he ,rote here the whole passage all that is ever given. almighty god created the races white, black him a yellow, and the like.

he placed them on separate continents. that was delivered, you know. withor the interference his arrangements, he will never explain what he might mean by that, there could be no cause for such marriages. the fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. so i suppose, and we should guess the state of virginia had a duty to force god's chosen design. often misplaced, that statement is frequently said to be voiced at the original trial in january 1959. you join death normally do not get a judge explaining the resolution to a case at that point. in fact, he actually wrote these words six years later. when the lemmings have successfully brought the case back to the court and now he had the obligation, the opportunity, to explain in tremendous detail. these are 12 pages, longhand.

they type out to about the same, where he articulates the history of the law of race and marriage. he sees no possible basis on which the lovings could bring a successful case on constitutional grounds. the rules are clear. this is simply his punchline and god almighty created the races. for my purpose today, the most striking thing about the judge is his own mixed marriage. [laughter] now, the papers have judged here at the virginia historical society include a just extraordinary collection over a time of years. he had a problem. he had a perspective pride. she understood he loved her. she was pretty fond of him as well.

but insisted, month and month out, leon, we can never be more than friends. we can never married. why? it is important to know that he is from virginia. she is from alabama. i'm sorry. ok. maybe this is it. [laughter] he is a catholic. she is a baptist. that caused huge problems to her the only way they resolve these problems on his terms in the end was when his draft notice came during world war i. she came suddenly to recognize he might well soon be going off to war and might well not be coming back and might have recognize in a way she never had how just vital to her happiness he was. and they got married. as a married man, he went off to france, where his great-grandparents had been born.

he is still a catholic and she is still a baptist, but now they're married. i did bring the script and i'm checking it. . want to make sure i cannot find one of those pages to ask somebody to rewrite it for me and bring it up in a hurry. [laughter] one fairly recent account of the loving story. i did mention they all get it wrong, right? that the judge had the maximum penalty on the couple. i guess 25 is more than 125 -- one to five. if they were guilty, and it was hard to imagine they were not,

then that was the discretion had to what he did was exiled them. but only up toe, a certain extent. they were not free to stay married and in virginia. to stay married and in virginia, but they were not free to do both. if he did not impose the maximum, if he did not even impose the minong, and what was going to the judge's mind that day? i write in the book, and i will quote here, we can imagine the judge. out in that courtroom and maybe he mused on his own mixed marriage, a long happy, family life and once he and his bride broke the barriers their religious faiths imposed, he saw something of a kindred spirit, not bound by other people's rules of love and marriage, not deterred by big

challenges in such matters. finally, the lovings to lawyers. both came on the scene several years in. between them, they put the judge in the fix he found himself in when he had to justify the original sentence. therefore, that language we just heard. in june, 1960 three, more than four years into their exile, we of aonsider it a promise fifth wedding anniversary present mildred gave to herself p or she said, i have got to get help. she had more than enough. she needed it fixed. mom could not do that back then. who she wrote was bobby kennedy in the nearby attorney general's office. could he help? could the civil rights bill in congress at the time eventually help? the letter came back and we can

imagine her opening it and looking at it, hopeful and apprehensive, reading no, cannot help you, but you should talk to the people at the american civil liberties union. maybe they can help. is how she comes to know bernard, a young lawyer with no experience what ever in kosovo -- constitutional law cases, no experience whatever in federal court, no experience doing a lot of things. but he had some experience and he loved the name of the case he saw potentially going to the supreme court. [laughter] though he could not see how he could possibly win, he could not see how he possibly couldn't. it had to be a winnable case. he describes how he had to find a key to break through the door that was locking him out. he found a key and it turned out he needed another key. just absolutely stymied. he is visiting with his old for

faster at his law program in d.c.. her --e for him to see his old professor, was a new letter from mrs. loving. mr.:, i hope you have not forgotten us. it has been a year since our first letter. " -- he is fairly desperate. maybe he doesn't maybe he does not but what happened that day is different. a younger lawsuit -- student who had been off doing battle with the forces of the civil rights movement in the deep south, he was in federal court all the time come on the frontlines of the movement. he knew immediately what you do it you go to federal court. the two of them teamed up. the case possible to that point. hirsch cuff makes it possible to carry to a successful conclusion. we do not know that yet.

all we know is in the summer of a new,w, and we found possible way forward. if we fast-forward to the case itself, we will wrap back to it, they win. we know that. i am not withholding any vital information. to live the permanent, new brick building. central point is their home. once again, raise the kids on a mildredall the things had dreamed about. she is back with her mom and dad. back with her sister, back where she belongs. all is good and they live in idyllic existence and it lasts time grand total of less they had been married, they thought, before the courts say they were. she and her husband and her sister, to central .1 night.

they got run into. when mildred described it, i knew richard died at the scene. or that about the drive he jumped a stop sign p or what i gather is he jumped from the left side. but you do your homework. you go to the site and look at it and say, that is not where the road is coming in at all. it is coming from the right but almost head on. i do not think he jumped the stop sign. i think he never slowed down. slammed in not quite head-on. mildred is seriously hurt. richard is dead. in thee free to live house but without richard. that is the first of the two downers that the loving story ended on. it is designed to shock and of course, it does.

what do we know about the drive are? i will tell you this. dui andarged with manslaughter. he is convicted of both charges. he is fined for both convictions. there is no jail sentence involved. does take him to court. bernie cohenbe -- will be her lawyer. that helps. not much. the decision,bout when the court handed down the ruling, 15 states in colluding virginia, 15 states plus virginia, still have such laws on the books. it was still a crime, by some s.finition

get married in state but it was the same crime in the same penalty if they went out-of-state in d.c., got married, and present to import that marriage against public policy of virginia. when the court rules, it is suddenly no longer a crime anywhere. it is not just the lovings who are free to come home. it is any other couple, no matter where they live. they can now get married, live anywhere, move anywhere. it is not just the crime that goes away. it is more than that. the court went further and throughout all the lost. of course they were married. now all the couples who had sought marriage licenses but had been turned away could go back. fact, the court could have

just on the first of those two thinks. that would be the narrow ruling. we deal with an immediate question before us, but we do not reach beyond and beyond and beyond. the court was really far more ambitious in his decision in this case. what the court could have done is not just the hypothetical or one of the members of the court, it is always set about the case that the ruling came down from a unanimous court. in april found sense, it did. said, these convictions must be overruled. there is no question about that. it is not human -- unanimous in one major way. stewart thought that is all the court should do. he wrote, as he had in another case, it is simply not possible for a state law to be valley -- valid under our constitution, which makes the criminality of the act depend upon the race of an act or. he does not go off and take down

the rest of it. courts other eight members ended the opinion the chief justice wrote, these convictions must be first. the others took the case much further. why it was so much more than it might have been and so much more than is per trade in one piece of popular culture, let's look at that. many of you may have seen the so-called documentary a few years ago. probably a lot of you have seen that. a captivating story. it relies heavily on two fabulous sets of visual images from the mid-1960's. iss command of the facts otherwise limited. throughout its sense of history, sense of historical context, it is i know means reliable. the film spends most of his

time, tracking the story of mildred and richard and then the three kids across time. it can do that through these images. then when it reaches the supreme court, it does precisely what a documentary on to do. everson's the 1950's, the proceedings of the court have been recorded. in fact recordings where you can hear the actual or argument, both sides presenting their case, preferred outcome. the questions that come from the do that. and we get to we get to hear it as if they were there on site at that time. and hirschohen -- hershcopf were.

did not do very much for anyone else. how do we know that? the last line of the film projected on the screen tells us find out that not until the year 2000 did alabama and its ban on interracial marriage. i am not say everyone who walks out of the theater having seen that film is convinced alabama having to force those laws. -- having spoken after those screenings, it is a matter of deep concern how alabama could get away with that. the answer is easy. alabama did not get away with that. what do i mean? what we have here is deception by factoid. shock value is a punchline that distorts what in fact happened for the voters of alabama took until the year 2000 to remove

from the state constitution a band that had been there for a great many years. ban had been put in the state constitution per site -- precisely so no weak kneed legislator could get rid of that law and no good -- no judge could say it is not in us constitution of alabama and it does not hold. when you constitutionalize, you make it harder to change and also, and this is not secondary, you also symbolize your commitment to that position. you make clear how important it is to you. in south carolina could have been the punchline to the film. as long, untilt 1998. they were fairly progressive. they got rid of it two years earlier. [laughter] but if loving actually had traction, then the constitutional ban in alabama had been a dead letter for how many years? give or take 33?

what actually happened, when we immediateat the aftermath, it took two tracks. cases already in the court in june of 1967 went in a different direction than they would have in the absence of loving versus virginia. kid inthese was a federal court in oklahoma. i am sorry. a federal case in delaware, where a mixed-race couple had gone to get a marriage license just a few months earlier. of the ruling, the federal court issues his decision. in light of loving, how could there be any other rule? rule has beenware overwritten i the supreme court of america. overriden by the supreme

court of america. the other cases in oklahoma. they had a law against untilacial marriages 1957. the other case was not criminal law either. the other case had to do with dying in the absence of a will, that gets contested because some said you'd do not have a valid marriage to begin with. very soon thereafter, the state supreme court of oklahoma rules in precisely the way it never had in all the history of oklahoma. race has nothing to do with it, this is a very -- valid marriage, property can be inherited under it, case closed. we have two cases all ready in the courts. neither one of them criminal. had the reach of loving versus virginia ruling, only to criminal law. these cases would not have been affected. they were affected in a radically different direction

and had the outcome they would have had if loving versus virginia had not been handed down, not been handed down the way it was, and not that handed down when it was. but there is more. past fewheard in the weeks about local court officials upset about what it looked like they might have to do with regard to marriage licenses and couples they did not approve of. much the same thing happened. the language employed, as far as i can tell, had nothing to do with religion. it had everything to do with race. it had to do with, does local law still govern? whose rules must i abide by? were uncertain about what path of a should take. you have just seen potter stewart, had he prevailed, those cases would not have gone the way they did. what about alabama? let's cannot get to alabama yet. florida.

came -- went to the state supreme court and a lot of others went to federal court. the florida sued in court said, ofing governs the outcome courts. this couple must get the marriage licenses they otherwise qualify for. vote from the florida supreme court was 5-2. you have to think the judge had two in florida. the couple got the license in florida. other cases were for -- from federal court. page. lost a someone will have to run in here and give me a replacement in a real hurry. i do not need that, do i? within weeks, and scattered over the next several years, state after state after state went,

resolution, arkansas, the others are all deep south. mississippi and georgia, state louisiana, i want a marriage license, i have been told i cannot have one, going to federal district court. those folks have heard the news from washington, d.c. the license gets issued. it took a while. the last of the cases i've outlined, georgia in 1972, mississippi is 1970 and arkansas is 1968. it scattered over several years and it does not and all at one spirit you have to have someone go on and get a license. then you have got to have them turned back here all we were seeing here were cases where there was somebody turned back. rule thatknow as a other cases where that did not happen. it has been got to make its way through the court. it is sometimes not so fast. what about alabama?

a couple wants a license. what we have here, the short version of this, i tell it in detail in both books to try will cut along. the short version is, it is 1970. federal court says, yes, you have got to do this thing. the local official declined to the state attorney general's office weighed in on his part. going to hold onto this thing as long as possible. it turned out the -- as long as possible was not very long. think about the arithmetic here. how long has it and since loving till the end of 1970? under 3.5 years. that is less than something under 3.5 decades. deception by factoid is true and interesting, but it is not very interesting and it is not very true that it took until 2000 for ban to goa bam --

ape. you could get a license and you did get a license. now some of you are interested since then. we have got what? how many decades since the 1970's? about four. if in fact loving reverberates down through the u.s. supreme june 2015, how do we connect interracial with same sex? for thevery short order first same-sex couples to go into court, seeking to take the language of loving, that the freedom to marry and about how important it was, what a crucial piece of american freedom it was, to argue it should apply to same-sex couples as well. the first was in minnesota in 1970.

he loses. minnesota says that was mere race. minnesota saying that was mere race we were talking about. they actually take the case to the u.s. supreme court, not a wise move all things considered. will get theay you supreme court to listen to your case there. a number of others from pennsylvania, new york, kentucky and washington state. they all turned back and went nowhere. i detail the story in various ways. we go forward down to just the past three years. along the way, loving continues to go back in and pieces of it get incorporated a central components of judicial rulings that begin to move one jurisdiction or another at least toward what becomes then same-sex marriage. it is absolutely vital, the roles that loving played. i did not tell much about the story in my first book which came out in 2002. the highest court in massachusetts had not ruled yet.

stream,ions had come on but had not gone beyond that. there was not much to tell and i did not tell much. in the new book, i had to tell a lot. when i was beginning to finish up the long thing that was going to be the prologue to the , two chapters i gave to the subject, and then a couple of books came out and i said, ok, i do not need to carry the full narrative version. i can bare bones it and it is far more streamlined. and i did. a few weeks ago, the day of the ruling back in june, i got a communication from the editor in chief of the daily beast. at the dailylished beast before. i am not sure how many of you have. [laughter] this was on a friday. by monday morning, my 2000 word piece was posted. it was not perfect. we still had to tinker with it it -- a bit.

was, andnot said who i i kind of wanted that there as well. [laughter] so we fixed all of that here it i wrote up some stuff. that i liked a lot. the next few paragraphs, i borrow from that this is my thinking well after the book we are talking about today went to press. but all of this is in the first two books. chief justice wrote -- the freedom to marry has long been recognized as the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. it is sexist. free women as well. ok. vital to. essential to. not negotiable. not marginal. veryyou read it carefully, clearly it was tied to race. that was all they were talking about. the bundle of power states had traditionally exercised over the

institution of marriage, age of consent, first cousins, this is rich in you, right? [laughter] all kinds of things. those got left in place and subsequent reports would often observed that only race had been taken out of the bundle. the court took race out of the bundle and now the court has gone on to remove gender tontity as any impediment marriage. if we compare the two, and that was the question i was asked in these can't -- in this context, in some respect, the litigation came at a substantially more advanced and more matures date of development. that is simple looking at how many states had signed on to a regime that did no longer restrict marriage on the basis of race. or1948, shortly after wrote two, the number of states out of 48 that still had such laws were 30.

you cannot do that with 17 other states. you cannot do that. california was the first and it tower to fall. the supreme court, 423 ruling, 1948, says it does not pass muster. the way we read the law of the land, we cannot do that anymore, it is gone. state after state, even states such as south dakota. [laughter] got rid of their venerable laws. leaving behind the solitary proprietorship, 17 states. that is all there were. 24-24 when the lemmings got married. that is down to 17 when the case -- by the time the court ruled in loving. let's think about this. maryland repealed its law.

this is a law that dated back to the 17th century. theland had initiated regime. maryland had put it out there that if a white woman marries a black man, and, by definition at that point, the black man was going to be a slave, at that point. in that place. she will immediately become a slave and her children will be slaves. that law was enforced for a very long time. maryland, that had led the inrge even before virginia, 1691, even before, decades before. maryland repealed it. what has happened to maryland? the city of baltimore, the voting rights act of 1955, legislative report and because the court had ruled on yet another issue of great importance in the early 1960's. this combination made it possible for a black female of the state legislature to propose a bill that got enacted to get maryland out of the mix. that took place shortly before the loving ruling came down.

it went 11 days before the supreme court ruled. we are at 16, virginia plus 15. in that sense, i think loving came along and it was a lot easier to save time and get rid of the outlier to make it uniform, nationalize the right. but the recent ruling in the , in a sense, came at a much more mature time. thatovings were subject to imprisonment. there has been no such penalty hanging over same-sex couples since the year 2003 when the supreme court spoke in an earlier case. you could argue at least to the most recent one. from that perspective, it was much less in issue. somest finished talking in

detail about, can you get a license in hand property on, all the kinds of things that come with the rights of marriage. the issue and that profound sense of actually losing your freedom and be free to run around. two more things. at some point, i will run out of time. [laughter] the two things i want to do, i want you to think with me about the things you can come away from the loving story with. to rephrase that so it does not get confused. then i want to come back to the epilogue and return it to where i began. first and south to have students for years now, they do not come from the south because they come from northern virginia. [laughter]

but one of the hazards of being a historian is you go on the there.d get frozen for me in the south, it is precisely those states that still have the laws on the books as in the beginning of 1967. it is precisely the same states, the same 17 states that still talked about segregated public schooling on the day before brown versus board. it is not like you have to mix and match. it is the same 17 states. people always want to talk about the south and never tell us what they mean by it. the former slave states, don't you love that one? that is when historians get caught in a time warp. it is 1860 and their thinking about maryland one way and the civil war and virginia in another. when i think about former slave states, i think about massachusetts and new york.

states.original 13 it is easy to get confused about what we're talking about. let's leave that behind and do real stuff. the time the cases in the courts, central point is this unique place on the planet to nowhere else in the world could richard have looked at mildred and seen marriage material. and yet, how many dozens of couples whose stories i told appeared and a whole lot of others as well in the latest book? these people clearly did not see race as a major impediment to their falling in love and marrying answer earning a family is together long enough to .ecome great grandparents the central point to me is potentially everyplace, and , thately special place was their special place.

there were lots of special places. central point was not newly -- not unique. it gets to my next point about states rights. states rights are always carted out as a deflector shield deflecting against federal intrusion of authority. i do not see it primarily in those terms. sees it in those terms. what i see is state pair -- power imposed upon the residents, the citizens of the state. any countervailing authority to intervene pair it depend on our protect when the lovings needed the friend -- a friend or to just be left alone. it is a very different face on it when we look at it in these terms. what else do i have? it is a definition. virginia kept changing it.

the same as georgia and mississippi. the laws there were thrown out in west virginia. true that theyay got it right and will keep it that way. if you're one quarter black, your black and anything less than that, you're not. the one rule of black racial identity is a 20th century invention. in 1984.inaugurated the great authorities in alabama and georgia said that is a great idea -- we will do that as well. oklahoma had, earlier. it did a really weird thing. everything -- everybody is white

unless they have black ancestry. everybody is. virginia kept changing the rules. any place could. state power. one of my favorite people, in the early 20th century, he could -- except an african-american. in virginia, he could marry anybody who was not caucasian. where do you draw the line? who draws it? and what are the penalties? of whitethe matter racial purity. a lot of people out there study this far better than i can and family if we track our tree back very far, eventually, we show up in africa, all of us. what does the african ancestry mean?

ago, the biggest auditorium we had, at virginia tech, he told his story. one young man in the middle of the audience stood up and wanted to interrogate stephen jay gould? . couldn't he realign his facts such that his great ancestors did not come from africa? it is marvelously problematic. we're all crazy. think of these things and get your head around these most people who know me will tell you, it happened a long time ago in my case. here i am trying to bring you along by doing some of these complexities. died, was an she

black woman to we know she was black because the state of virginia said she was black. colored becomes negro becomes black. mildred declared herself an indian. gro and indians ancestry. what are we to think about this? here is a woman in the irony of her host life. she gets to be the one person on the planet who more than any other took race out of the equation. of prison imposing power on the basis of their race. she more than any took the power to do that kind of thing and cannot identify herself now?

here is my thought on this matter. walter, do not mention his name in the presence of native americans in virginia. walter, one of the key components of the racial integrity act and a key enforcer of it, in this public capacity, he would be a guest at what the supreme court in the united states did in 1967 and yet might take comfort in the fact there is roles. he lost the battle of the courts and wins the war of the rhetoric. his language lives on. it has been changed over. it is still a binary world and somebody else gets to decide who you are. great. civil rights, political rights, social rights. historians know that was an absolutely essential way to distinguish.

descendents of that generation in the 1960's knew that they were all the same in all and separable and all crucial and they all came under the category of civil rights. it is a false construct to project onto the 18th century -- 19th century the notion that everybody agrees to that, because otherwise, how do we describe it? 60 of the 70 original states repealed or their state courts overruled or both any laws they had against interracial marriage . for an extended period, no such laws prevailed. is that weird or what? what i especially like is not only the judges and legislators believe that all the rules had changed on race, which turned out to be true only for a time, but it was true for a time, so

did all the citizens who did not see race as a great impediment on who they see as marriage material. some of them got busted and some of those cases to court and some of them one -- won and some of them did not. some spent years in state penitentiary. they could do that. it turned out they were wrong, but they did not make those distinctions that often get imposed. what else do i have for you? i have one more and then we'll get to the epilogue before sam turns off the mic. people, by thehe people, and for the people, the earth.erish from abraham lincoln, gettysburg, 1863, 100 years before mildred loving wrote her letter to bobby kennedy.

lincoln was expressing a hope you are he was expressing a fear. his rhetoric suggested this was already in place and was in jeopardy of being lost. this had never been in place and was in promise of coming on screen. if we do not treat it all as one -- if we treat them as separate prepositions, what we government of some people and by and for other people and that is the horror story for the people on the of category. voiced was the dawning of an age where it was just possible, perhaps, to bring into alignment those three prepositions so the same people subject to the rules they were passing would be those who made and we agree on

what those rules are. all right? it has taken an extraordinary struggle over a great many years bringing the case that they did care and i like that. now the blog. i promised we would get there the funeralright home had an electronic board. you could leave memorials behind . i am one of the people who saw the testimonials. i took them all down to it i love them. everyone of them here it i will share a few with you. people had toings say at the time, to help us understand perhaps how a lot of people, when she died, saw her, fromow we might see her, one family of florida whose members have spoken to mrs.

loving on numerous occasions, they said, who knew this private woman was carrying on a conversation with people we did not even know about? her strength and fortitude to persevere and stay true to her heart despite huge obstacles shows she is truly an american icon for civil rights in america. mildred's name will be synonymous in the history books for generations to come for creating a colorblind society. from a writer in woodbridge, virginia, came the statement that she did not personally know but "id mrs. loving, feel i owe them gratitude." me, myother once told husband is the best thing that ever happened to me. this is from a woman who grew up at the time the lovings were busted and would have believed, did, that this

is not appropriate behavior. a similar note that it was their strength and courage that allows me to have a wonderful life. it was mostly women writing in about the death of this woman. that was striking. in my part of the world, i guess i owe my whole life to your mother. i live in virginia and i did not meant itl i read it was against the law here. i guess i only all to her. i wish i had known of her before she had passed. because of their courage, my parents were able to marry in 19 68. my mother black and my father wait. my parents truly had a love life my mother never

married. your mother made it possible for me to love and marry who i choose. my husband and i probably would not be together had it not been for their effort. some wrote with recognition that though i did not take the loving decision in their home state, nonetheless, it freed them up. someone from new york writing -- "i cannot imagine living in a country where my husband and i could not really move as a couple. yet that would not your case had mildred has -- had mildred loving and her husband not attested in the court of law. three things -- one on the road from the church -- to the cemetery, tuesday -- two saint baptist.

out in front, a fire truck with light blazing, three men, apparently white, standing at attention as the vehicles came peggy'surned out that volunteer with the fire department and they were paying tribute to the local hero and cherished grandmother of their friend and colleague. bit,the cemetery, after a suddenly i saw it. asple drumming and singing they accompanied them into the spirit world. when they had concluded, one of the women came over to the rest of the crowd and said some people might deny mildred loving alwaysitage, but she had

been and would ever remain a member of the rappahannock nation. afterwards, i went into bowling green and stop by this courthouse and the skanky old jail mildred had been terrorized in, no longer in use. there was a monument with language to the effect that mildred loving, who along with her husband helped strike down laws prohibited -- brooding interracial marriage in the united states. andook a tremendous effort people took that people told me about the sustained effort to get their names on it, but there it is and there it remains. electronicack looking bored. people said things like this -- what a beautiful love story, mildred and richard together again. word system separate

them. that is my favorite. and the maryland, much the same -- no man or court and never break that. from wisconsin, mildred is with her true love and no one can came -- no one can keep them apart. rest well, peaceful warrior. you are reunited for ever with your life. thank you. [applause] >> we will take a couple of questions. there are microphones. the first one back there. >> an important and timely story. states that many have such laws, such racial integrity laws.

how vigorously where they enforced and, particularly as white military veterans, for example, came home with asian spouses? peter: i love that question. tell you about the california law where it was not a crime to be married into racially live whatever definition. seattleake the train to , washington state had no such law. , andould get married there you would be subject to potential civil liabilities. varied even as to whether they criminalize what they defined as interracial marriage. uniformlaws were pretty in criminalizing it and putting serious penalties attached to any violations. the question is how long were

these in force? i know someone who has pursued a series of cases where such cases came from the court and she tried to find what was happening in the local community? what was held back as a potential weapon brought into play only when you were unhappy with somebody? notion -- thethe news about the fact that richard ran a racing car operation with two men of color and that maybe the judge had a racing car himself and richard had him. so who knows about these things? one answer is clearly, these laws were not always enforced. there's no question about this. you can ask people who lived forever and the laws hammered

them or someone who paid the penalty and came out and next census shows that this is in the 19th century -- no one appears to be bothering them anymore. there's a tremendous patchwork. the last question about military personnel, i love it. no where can i find anything in the literature about such family experiences. not occur to does anyone that this is an interesting question. while the cases are in the court and the lovings are still contesting for their freedom, a young man who grew up in south carolina having come out of the navy or maybe still in the navy, he met in hawaii a young woman of clearly japanese ancestry. they get married in caroline county and live to the stay in northern virginia. did at by because he's not a local guy or because he's

in the military or a veteran? does he get a by because she is not african-american and not local? we do not know. what we do know is a lot of people got busted and a lot of people didn't or it took a long time for them to get busted. others who had been and then got left alone. it is one of the functions of terror, you could say that you are subject to a rule that you know about but you never know when it is going to hit you. versus virginia would take away is that no one will come and get you in the middle of the night. you made me curious when you gave judge potter the decision that courts one day and have beenion

given jurisdiction by some authority, apparently to the best of my knowledge, the supreme court gets its knowledge from the constitution and i was felt he-- judge potter had gone as far as he could as far as the authority even to him under the constitution. other judges felt differently. where did they get their claim they can go beyond that jurisdiction? justice potter stewart putting in this concurring opinion -- you could argue it is partly dissenting and partly concurring. approach that judges typically do in cases where they only need to go so far to make the decision. thatis as far as he sought

it's imperative he take the ruling. what his brother and saw was that that did not begin to touch the case. if you took away the criminal component, it would still be an unmarried couple living in for genia and would be subject to two indictments of cohabitation. to take that as a short answer to the question, the whole panoply had to be brought down. regardless of whether there was a criminal component. in some cases, loving versus virginia is not written in as elegantly as it might have been, but it is a powerful statement that gets the job pretty well done. thatwere ruling in a way they thought it was time we got rid of all of this stuff. partsaw this as a central of a package that came before them.

it wasn't just the criminal components, it was anything that had to do with marriage and law. >> i'm so confused. thewestern i have is authority they get is from the constitution. what portion of the constitution did they use to make their kind of thinking more decision? peter: let's bring the 14th amendment here are the centerpiece. it's quite clear in the language how you transmit that -- translate that and apply it to a given issue. there's no way to meet the equal protection clause. these people are being denied their freedom without due process. their duty is to take their best judgment as to what the law is and apply it to the situation

and what the lovings did was ring them the occasion that permitted them to do just that. question.al >> would you comment on the restrictions at virginia, texas, north carolina have all recently passed and what is going to happen about them? peter: not really. [laughter] the 15th amendment is still in play. the voting rights act of 1965 is still in play and a fairly recent ruling by the u.s. green court does not quite a lot of room for comfort that restrictions get embellished in whatever fashion could be dispatched. but we don't know. places one of those where the music is always playing, so you find a new way to restrict access to the

electorate. you can't use race, so you use a poll tax or some other euphemism. that was in the 19th century. rings have not changed that much. -- things have not changed that much. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] lou and herbert hoover came to the white house has trained geologists and experienced world travelers who were successful in the private and public sectors. just month in -- just months into hoover's term, the market crashed. lou hoover advocated volunteer

-- voluntarism and charity. but as the depression deepened, their one term ended over overwhelming public frustration. tonight, c-span's original series -- "first ladies -- first ladies who filled the position and their influence on the presidency from martha washington to michelle obama" that's tonight on american history tv on c-span3. , he was aa nazi concentration camp commandant and he was responsible for the murder of thousands of jews. "q&a" a life altering discovery that her grandfather was a nazi concentration can, -- nazi concentration camp commandant.

>> he was a tremendously cool person -- tremendously cool l person. crue he had two dogs and he trained them to tear humans apart. i think this sums it up really good. felt was a pleasure he when he killed people. is something that when you are normal, if you don't have this aspect of your personality, it's very difficult to grasp. >> that's tonight on c-span's "q&a." mitchellr-old frank became the first african-american congressional page in april of 1965. u.s. representative paul finley

of illinois suggested him for the job and sponsored him while he was in washington, d c both of them discuss this at the abraham lincoln library. the u.s. capitol page alumni hosted this 40 minute event. on behalf of the u.s. capitol page alumni association, want to welcome you to the abraham lincoln easy him to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the firsttment african-american page in the house of representatives. [applause] i'm the president of the alumni association and this event is one of a series of events we have held reuniting former pages and to commemorate historic events that involve pages. i would first like to