Bernard Cohen, lawyer who took on mixed marriage laws, dies
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Bernard S. Cohen, who won a landmark case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of laws forbidding interracial marriage and later went on to a successful political career as a state legislator, has died. He was 86.
Cohen and legal colleague Phil Hirschkop represented Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman who were convicted in Virginia in 1959 of illegally cohabiting as man and wife and ordered to leave the state for 25 years.
Cohen and Hirschkop represented the Lovings as they sought to have their conviction overturned. It resulted in the Supreme Court's unanimous 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling, which declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
Cohen died Monday of complications from Parkinson's disease at his home in Fredericksburg, said his son, Bennett Cohen.
Read more: https://www.inquirer.com/wires/ap/bernard-cohen-lawyer-who-took-mixed-marriage-laws-dies-20201014.html
Civil rights lawyer Bernard Cohen with members of the Prince William County Bar Association in 2016.
Cohen co-represented Richard and Mildred Loving, whose landmark 1967 case, Loving v. Virginia, overturned state miscenegation laws nationwide.
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