If you haven’t seen “Loving” yet, you need to. The movie tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, a white man and “colored” woman living in Caroline County in the 1950s, who married in violation of the law against mixed-race wedlock. Their case famously went to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the dismemberment of anti-miscegenation laws across the country.
While the movie touches upon the legal issues stemming from their predicament, it is first and foremost a love story of two people who build a life and family together. Refraining from overt moralizing, “Loving” is all the more powerful for its understatement. In the most moving scene in the movie, the ACLU attorney asks the laconic Loving if he has any words he wishes to convey to the justices of the Supreme Court. Replies the bricklayer: “Just tell the judges that I love my wife.”
Although the movie portrays a dark page from the Old Dominion’s history, Virginians will appreciate the beautiful photography of the Tidewater countryside and the evocation of a rural community in which whites, blacks and (unmentioned in the movie) Indians mixed socially despite the strictures of segregation.
“Loving” is a beautiful expression of natural libertarianism, the philosophy expressed by the phrase “live and let live.” The Lovings were not social crusaders. Like many Americans, they just wanted to be left alone. It was their misfortune to run afoul of laws designed to maintain the “purity” of the white race. Thankfully, legally enforced segregation is a thing of the past. But, sadly, there is no shortage of social engineers who would harness the power of the state in other ways to impose their values and obsessions upon others.
