The Loving Story

This Oscar-shortlisted film is the definitive account of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage: Loving v. Virginia. Married in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter returned home to Virginia where their marriage was declared illegal-he was white, and she was black and Native American. Hope Ryden's luminous, newly discovered home movie footage of the Lovings and their feisty young lawyers and rare photography by Grey Villet are stitched together in the debut feature by Full Frame Documentary Film Festival founder Nancy Buirski in a film that takes viewers behind the scenes of a pair of unlikely civil rights pioneers and their real-life love story.

More about the Supreme Court case:

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),[X 1] [X 2] is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The Supreme Court's unanimous decision determined that this prohibition was unconstitutional, reversing Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the U.S., and is remembered annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the subject of two movies, as well as several songs. Beginning in 2013, it was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional, including in the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges.

Nancy Buirski's documentary The Loving Story, premiered on HBO in February 2012[43][44] and won a Peabody Award that year.[45]

Rate video 
Human Rights
Trending Articles
Intersections of Science and Spirituality
Most Watched Documentaries
Documentaries by Scott Noble
Subscribe for $5/mo to Watch over 50 Patron-Exclusive Films

Become a Patron. Support Films For Action.

For $5 a month, you'll gain access to over 50 patron-exclusive documentaries while keeping us ad-free and financially independent. We need 350 more Patrons to grow our team in 2024.

Subscribe here

Your support helps grow our 6000+ video library, which is 99% free thanks to our patrons!