

She wrote then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy for help, and he recommended that she contact the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which decided to take the Lovings' case. I couldn't take it." After her son Donald was hit by a car, she had enough (Donald suffered scrapes and bruises but was okay). It was like being caged, and I couldn't stand it. The children didn't have anywhere to play. "I didn't want to leave away from around my family and friends," said Mildred, "and when I was in Washington, well, I just wanted to go back home. By 1963, Mildred longed for her family and friends and was fed up with city life living in exile with Richard and their children in Washington, D.C. The Loving Storyĭid Mildred really write to then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy for help? "He went to his parents' home, I went to my parents' home," said Mildred. He was to make sure she showed up at court. She stayed there several more days until they let her go home without a bond but under her father's responsibility. In researching the Loving true story, we learned that Richard and Mildred were under $1,000 bonds, but the authorities told the bonding company that they would put Richard back in jail if the company tried to get Mildred out too.

The Loving Storyĭid the authorities refuse to let Mildred out of jail on a bond? He said that Caroline County was a small community where whites and blacks were mixed together and helped one another. He said that he never found out why the police picked on him and Mildred and not the other couples, but as emphasized in the film, he believes that somebody who didn't like them talked. "Yeah, I know a few," said Richard Loving at the time. According to Virginia law, it didn't matter that they had gotten married out of state in Washington, D.C. "They asked Richard who was that woman he was sleepin' with," states Mildred, "and I said, 'I'm his wife,' and the sheriff said, 'Not here you're not,' and he said, 'C'mon, let's go.'" Mildred attempted to show the police the marriage certificate hanging on the bedroom wall, but the certificate was used against them as evidence that they were guilty in Virginia of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth." This was the charge that was levied against them.

"When we got up they were standing beside the bed, with flashlights." I heard 'em and before I could get up, they just broke the door and came on in," recalls Richard. "They came one night and they knocked a couple times. Instead, the officers found them asleep in their bed. in hopes of catching them having sex, which would put them in violation of another Virginia law. On July 14, 1958, just a few weeks after they got married, Sheriff Garnett Brooks and two deputies raided their Caroline County home at approximately 2 a.m.
