This was only 55 years ago. You can understand a lot of what’s wrong with the US if you realize that the average age of our elected senators is about 63. “Good old days” is a dogwhistle.
Our current Supreme Court might’ve ruled against the Lovings.
[Image ID: excerpts from the article linked above, reading:
“The couple is given a choice: flee or go to jail. After they were arrested, the Lovings were sentenced to a year in prison. Then, a judge offered them a choice: banishment from the state or prison. They chose to leave Virginia at the time, but after several years, the Lovings asked the American Civil Liberties Union to take their case.Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, two young ACLU lawyers at the time, did.”
and “On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in the Lovings' favor. The unanimous decision upheld that distinctions drawn based on race were not constitutional. The court's decision made it clear that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.” /end ID]
It was 55 years ago.
My father just had his 70th birthday.
When my parents first met it'd been less than a decade since the ruling was official.
They were convinced it'd be overturned and did not want their children to have to suffer for it, so they did not get married and searched desperately for each other in their own races. They could not find the love they had together in anyone else. They did eventually get married.
Too late for them to have the amount of children they'd desired. They had two, adopted a third, and that was that.
It was near enough to now that I, my sisters, and my parents were directly affected by it.
This isn't ancient history. It's just my parents' childhood.
