Mildred Loving

Storybooks would have us believe that love can conquer all. In the case of Mildred Loving and her husband, theirs did.

In 1958, the Lovings - Mildred was black, Richard white - were arrested in their bed for breaking Virginia's law forbidding interracial marriage. They were convicted of that felony charge and banished from the commonwealth.

Nine years later, after the Supreme Court ruled in the case bearing their name, the Lovings were free to live in Virginia, as husband and wife, and miscegenation laws across America were declared unconstitutional.

The decision struck down one more vestige of the centuries America failed to live up to its own ideals. It was another step among many that led to an era when Americans are free to love who they want, are free to pursue happiness of the heart wherever it takes them.

That, of course, was not the goal.

"We have thought about other people," Richard Loving told Life magazine in 1966, "but we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us."

Richard Loving died in a car wreck in 1975. On Friday, at her home in Caroline County, Mildred died, ending 33 years without the love of her life, the man who helped her change the world. She was 68.