A couple that never lost that Loving feeling

Photos of the Loving Family from Grey Villet's 1965 Life Magazine Essay - NYTimes.com

In the spring of 1965, my husband, Grey Villet, was given a Life Magazine assignment to photograph the Lovings, an interracial married couple then embroiled in legal tangles after their arrest for miscegenation in Virginia. Grey did not concern himself with those entanglements. He chose, as he did in every essay we ever worked on together, to seek out the literal heart of the matter: a love story.

Tender Photos Unearthed from a Turbulent Time | Love + Sex - Yahoo! Shine

When Mildred and Richard Loving married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, they didn't think they were breaking the law. Both were from the small town of Central Point, Virginia. Mildred was of African-American and Native American decent and Richard was white. They did know it was illegal for them to marry in their state-as well as 15 others--which is why they left to tie the knot. Within a month of returning home, police burst into their bedroom in the middle of the night and arrested them under the state's anti-miscegenation law. They were sentenced to a one-year in prison term that could be suspended if they left Virginia.