Showing posts with label America the Beautiful. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America the Beautiful. Show all posts
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Flag Day 2008
The Flag at Raton, New Mexico
Courtesy of YouTube poster "gully42". Free for non-commercial use.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
A Loving Legacy
Mildred Delores Jeter, born in 1939 or 1940, grew up in Central Point, near Bowling Green, Caroline County, Virginia. It was a small town where of course everybody knew everybody else. By the time Mildred was eleven or twelve years old, she was smitten with the handsome, blond, older boy with the curious name, Richard Loving. A friend of Mildred's family, Richard must have liked her, too, because they became sweethearts.
When Mildred turned 18, Richard asked her to marry him. There was just one problem: Mildred was not blonde like her sweetheart. Mildred was the daughter of two parents who were part black and part Indian. The Commonwealth of Virginia prohibited mixed race marriages under its 1924 "Racial Integrity Act." So Richard and Mildred drove about 90 miles north to Washington, D/C. They picked the name of a minister from the D.C. phone book, and got married. Then they drove back home.
Five or six weeks later, the Caroline County sheriff rousted Mr. and Mrs. Loving from their bed at 2:00 a.m. "Whose this woman you're sleeping with?" he demanded of Richard.
"I'm his wife," Mildred replied. The sheriff handcuffed them both and took them to jail. They were charged with illegally "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act, a felony.
At their trial, the Lovings pled guilty. Judge Leon Bazile said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix."
The judge sentenced them to one year in jail, but suspended the term for 25 years on condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return. Upon their release, they moved to Washington, D.C. On appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the convictions, but pointedly reminded the trial judge that they should have been sentenced to prison, not jail.
The Lovings might have, at that point, lived the rest of their lives in blissful obscurity. But Mildred missed her mother and Richard didn't think it right that he could not raise his family in the place where he grew up and called home.
Mildred wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union. With ACLU lawyers, the Lovings began fighting their convictions and banishment in both state and federal court.
On April 10, 1967, the case came before the United States Supreme Court. You can hear the argument yourself right here. The issue was whether Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (and similar laws in 17 other states) violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court announced its decision two months later, on June 12, 1967. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for a unanimous Court, said the Virginia law was simply "invidious racial discrimination" which was "odious to a free people." The law was unconstitutional. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Justice had prevailed for the Lovings and many others.
Richard and Mildred moved back home and quietly raised their three children.
Richard Perry Loving died the victim of a drunk driver in 1975.
Mildred Jeter Loving passed away last Friday, May 2, 2008.
June 12 is celebrated by mixed race couples and their friends and families as "Loving Day."
Audio of oral argument and text of case provided by The Oyez Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
When Mildred turned 18, Richard asked her to marry him. There was just one problem: Mildred was not blonde like her sweetheart. Mildred was the daughter of two parents who were part black and part Indian. The Commonwealth of Virginia prohibited mixed race marriages under its 1924 "Racial Integrity Act." So Richard and Mildred drove about 90 miles north to Washington, D/C. They picked the name of a minister from the D.C. phone book, and got married. Then they drove back home.
Five or six weeks later, the Caroline County sheriff rousted Mr. and Mrs. Loving from their bed at 2:00 a.m. "Whose this woman you're sleeping with?" he demanded of Richard.
"I'm his wife," Mildred replied. The sheriff handcuffed them both and took them to jail. They were charged with illegally "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act, a felony.
At their trial, the Lovings pled guilty. Judge Leon Bazile said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix."
The judge sentenced them to one year in jail, but suspended the term for 25 years on condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return. Upon their release, they moved to Washington, D.C. On appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the convictions, but pointedly reminded the trial judge that they should have been sentenced to prison, not jail.
The Lovings might have, at that point, lived the rest of their lives in blissful obscurity. But Mildred missed her mother and Richard didn't think it right that he could not raise his family in the place where he grew up and called home.
Mildred wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union. With ACLU lawyers, the Lovings began fighting their convictions and banishment in both state and federal court.
On April 10, 1967, the case came before the United States Supreme Court. You can hear the argument yourself right here. The issue was whether Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (and similar laws in 17 other states) violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court announced its decision two months later, on June 12, 1967. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for a unanimous Court, said the Virginia law was simply "invidious racial discrimination" which was "odious to a free people." The law was unconstitutional. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Justice had prevailed for the Lovings and many others.
Richard and Mildred moved back home and quietly raised their three children.
Richard Perry Loving died the victim of a drunk driver in 1975.
Mildred Jeter Loving passed away last Friday, May 2, 2008.
June 12 is celebrated by mixed race couples and their friends and families as "Loving Day."
Audio of oral argument and text of case provided by The Oyez Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Only in America
America is a complicated place in practice. And in theory, it may be an impossibility. Yet, here it is, enduring while constantly adapting. Here is something about America that cannot be said about any other place in human history: Every individual who comes to America seeking America has bought into the theory that people can live free among others who are perhaps different, yet just as free, and we can all govern ourselves. That's why they keep coming. Even those who came involuntarily have agreed to the theory.
In 1938, hard times for most everybody in America, Langston Hughes wrote a poem that is at turns cynical yet hopeful, angry yet filled with anticipation of happiness. By his exhortation [to whom? God? The Government? Some other invisible force?] to "let America be America again," Hughes' narrator implicitly recognizes the validity of the theoretical America while at the same time suggesting that the practical America has worked and will work in the future.
What has America meant to me and my family? I reiterate what I wrote a year ago:
A lot of Americans are related to signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many more who are not claim to be. In any event that's not what's really important. What's really important is the fact that all Americans are related to people who had the fortitude to come to this continent seeking freedom, whether they came 300 years ago or three weeks ago. And no, I haven't forgotten that despite the Declaration's assertion that all men are created equal, that the writers of that sentence were aware that some on this continent were at that point in bondage. I'm related to to those who were in bondage as well as those who held them there. That's the story of America. But the essential part of the story of America is that unlike any other society that has existed on Earth, America is constantly fulfilling its promise. Those who were in involuntary servitude are no longer, not because some superior force from outside liberated them, but because Americans themselves corrected the nation's moral compass. That's what happens every day in this country: we continue to fulfill our promise as a nation.
For me to be an American, is to be the descendant of both slaves and slave owners. It means to have sprung from the root of those of many hues who'd dreamt the dreams of freedom. Hughes describes those people:
Hughes' narrator says that for him, "America never was America." Yet, for me, America has been America many times over. And for my family, it is plain that America continues to adapt to fulfill make theory into reality. For example, my parents both were born into poverty just 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation--the span of a human lifetime after bondage. Today, not much longer than those seventy years, they have postgraduate education, have held white collar jobs all of their adult lives, have become property owners, sent four children to college, and contribute in many ways to their church and community.
Only in America . . . .
But do I not understand that there those for whom America has yet to be America? Certainly, that's true. But only in America, could one say with confidence the words of Hughes' narrator: America will be!
Only in America . . . .
In 1938, hard times for most everybody in America, Langston Hughes wrote a poem that is at turns cynical yet hopeful, angry yet filled with anticipation of happiness. By his exhortation [to whom? God? The Government? Some other invisible force?] to "let America be America again," Hughes' narrator implicitly recognizes the validity of the theoretical America while at the same time suggesting that the practical America has worked and will work in the future.
What has America meant to me and my family? I reiterate what I wrote a year ago:
A lot of Americans are related to signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many more who are not claim to be. In any event that's not what's really important. What's really important is the fact that all Americans are related to people who had the fortitude to come to this continent seeking freedom, whether they came 300 years ago or three weeks ago. And no, I haven't forgotten that despite the Declaration's assertion that all men are created equal, that the writers of that sentence were aware that some on this continent were at that point in bondage. I'm related to to those who were in bondage as well as those who held them there. That's the story of America. But the essential part of the story of America is that unlike any other society that has existed on Earth, America is constantly fulfilling its promise. Those who were in involuntary servitude are no longer, not because some superior force from outside liberated them, but because Americans themselves corrected the nation's moral compass. That's what happens every day in this country: we continue to fulfill our promise as a nation.
For me to be an American, is to be the descendant of both slaves and slave owners. It means to have sprung from the root of those of many hues who'd dreamt the dreams of freedom. Hughes describes those people:
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
Hughes' narrator says that for him, "America never was America." Yet, for me, America has been America many times over. And for my family, it is plain that America continues to adapt to fulfill make theory into reality. For example, my parents both were born into poverty just 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation--the span of a human lifetime after bondage. Today, not much longer than those seventy years, they have postgraduate education, have held white collar jobs all of their adult lives, have become property owners, sent four children to college, and contribute in many ways to their church and community.
Only in America . . . .
But do I not understand that there those for whom America has yet to be America? Certainly, that's true. But only in America, could one say with confidence the words of Hughes' narrator: America will be!
Only in America . . . .
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