Beautiful soon to be released video. The Loving Kind. Loving v VA

[madfloridian]

Run time: 02:37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmlkJwKh_w   Posted on YouTube: April 06, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: April 06, 2009 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 852

 
The song is by Nanci Griffith, and Down with Tyranny got an advance copy. It is moving and lovely.

Nanci Griffith Has A New Song You Should Hear-- Even If You're Not A Music Fan

Nanci Griffith has a new album coming out in early June, The Loving Kind. I'll try to remind you about it when Rounder releases it. The record is spectacular but today I just want to say a few words about the title track. It's a really powerful song about a couple in Virginia, Richard and Mildred Loving. Despite Virginia's anti-miscengenation law which prevented mixed-race marriages-- something that more the half the states in the country had when I was growing up-- the young couple got married in June, 1958 in Washington, DC. She was 19 and he was 25. The police broke into their home and arrested them in bed. They were found guilty and sentenced to prison sentences which were suspended on condition of them leaving Virginia. At the time of the sentencing (in 1959), Judge Leon Bazile read this excuse for bigotry from the 1700s:

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.


Judge Bazile, or any like-minded Republican today would have to find a different excuse for denying gay people the right to marry. Last week we saw the Iowa Supreme Court strike down that state's anti-gay marriage law. Obsessed and hysterical, the far right will fight it-- just the way they fought against interracial marriages.

In 1964 the Supreme Court of the United States didn't have any hack rightist judges like Scalia or Thomas or Alito or Roberts. The court unanimously overturned the convictions and declared that Virginia's and other states' laws denying equality for people to marry regardless of race were unconstitutional.

[elleng]

1. Loving v. Virginia,

388 U.S. 1 (1967)<1>, was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

[cynthia]

2. First Iowa, then Vermont

thanks for posting this video

[Booster]

3. Sent out to everyone I know. thanks for posting.