Originally posted at the Independent Bloggers’ Alliance
Twenty years ago, one hot Saturday in August, I stood with my sweetie in a Catholic church on the north side of Chicago, and we exchanged our wedding vows. We had met in our second year of college, became friends, realized at some point that we were becoming more than friends, got engaged, and married the summer after graduation. Okay, I’ve kind of fast-forwarded through that timeline, but my point here is that ours was a very run-of-the-mill meeting and courtship by most standards. Like most couples, we had areas where we had a lot in common, and areas where we were different. One difference that caught most people’s attention was something we rarely noticed or thought about on our own–the fact that our skin pigmentation differed. (As Demetrius once put it, To be totally accurate Renee’s RGB triplet (red, green, blue) is 255, 226, 210. Mine is 109, 53, 40. 🙂 )
Yet, to some people, that difference was terribly important. At one time, people were so horrified at the notion of people with such dissimilar RGB triplets getting married that there were actual laws against it. But such laws came to an end, at least in this country, as a result of a Supreme Court decision that was made in favor of this couple, Mildred and Richard Loving.
That ruling was made 40 years ago today, so happy Loving Day! NPR did a segment about the Loving decision which you can listen to here.
