40 Years After Loving v. Virginia,
How Far Have We Come?
The immediate former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta shares a little piece of history with television journalist Connie Chung and even figure skating's Kristi Yamaguchi. Besides being legends in their own fields, each is one-half of an interracial marriage.
Mineta is married to Deni. Chung has famously loved television personality Maury Povich since 1984 and Yamaguchi glided into marital bliss with hockey star Bret Hedican.
Their love stories are enduring and somehow inextricably connected to a dark chapter in U.S. history when anti-miscegenation laws prohibited such unions.
June 12th was the ruby anniversary of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, which allowed love to bloom between persons of all colors. It was 40 years ago - on June 12, 1967 - that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. The decision also overturned similar bans in 15 other states.
The Supreme Court ruled that Virginia could not criminalize the marriage that Richard Loving, a white, and his black wife, Mildred, entered into nine years earlier in Washington, D.C. It's been four decades, but in the context of U.S. history, not long ago at all.
Before Mineta, Chung and Yamaguchi there was Dick Miyagawa and his Norwegian bride Marion Smithback, whom he married twice (once in 1945 on a Georgia military base and again in 1956) because the state of Georgia didn't recognize the marriage between a Nisei and a white woman.
People still don't believe that such laws existed, said Judy Miyagawa, the couple's daughter. "Some even don't believe me, that is, until I produced the actual letter from the attorney general's office in Georgia."
Marion was eight months pregnant in 1949, homeless because no one would rent to them and filled with despair at her doctor's office until she heard some prophetic words.
"[The doctor] said 'Marion, you are a pioneer. Not in our lifetime or even our children's, but in the future, race won't matter, there will be such a big melting pot of cultures and people,'" said Judy.
On the 40th anniversary of the Loving decision, how far has the country come since its racist past?
Looking into History to Find Inspiration
Race mattered in 1909 when Gunjiro Aoki, a handsome kendo master and socialist, was engaged to Helen Gladys Emery, daughter of the archdeacon of San Francisco's Grace Church.
The union, touted to be the first interracial Japanese/Caucasian marriage in California, so enraged local politicians that an emergency session was called in the assembly to specifically keep the wedding from happening. In order to get married, the couple boarded a train and kept traveling north. At every stop, hordes of people would try to stop their progress. But finally in Seattle the mayor, who was also a socialist, married Gunjiro and Helen.
"My grandfather and Gunjiro being upper class had no minority consciousness. Gunjiro saw a beautiful girl and he went for her," said Brenda Wong Aoki, who put together a one-woman play based on her great uncle.
They weren't trying to change laws or make political statements. By living and loving, they became trendsetters.
Noted San Francisco poet and community activist Janice Mirikitani married Rev. Cecil Williams in 1982, but that was after Williams presided over Mirikitani's wedding to her first husband in 1966 - a year before the Loving decision.
It wasn't love at first sight. She was going back to graduate school and needed to get a part-time job. A friend who was working at San Francisco's Glide Church recommended Mirikitani for a temporary position.
The first day on the job, she was transcribing tapes when Williams walked in and stood over her.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked her.
"No," she replied indignantly and he walked out. Her first impression was of a man "so egotistical they need to widen the doorways," but after years of friendship, love blossomed.
"We knew each other for 18 years before we got married. He's my best friend. Our lives have been affected by various different struggles," said Mirikitani, including resistance from their respective families over a marriage between a Japanese American and an African American.
"I think that more mixed marriages are an inevitable situation," she added. "The more integrated our society becomes, the more we as human beings are attracted to others who understand our souls."
Celebrating Loving Day
Since Loving v. Virginia, the number of interracial marriages has soared, according to Census Bureau figures. Coupled with a steady flow of immigrants from all parts of the world, the surge of interracial marriages and multiracial children is producing a 21st century America more diverse than ever, with the potential to become less stratified by race.
About 6.8 million described themselves as multiracial - 2.4 percent of the population. But many have not forgotten their roots.
For the last three years, the Loving Day Campaign has celebrated the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision with events nationwide. In New York's East River area, the largest Loving Day celebration was held June 10 with food and beverages.
"Part of Loving Day's mission is to fight prejudice through education. Prejudice certainly still exists; according to the FBI, race is still the top motivating factor in hate crimes by a large margin. Racial prejudice is especially persistent in the context of intimate relationships. Teaching people about the Loving decision is our way of fighting that prejudice," said Ken Tanabe, Loving Day creator.
"Legally, we have come a long way. From a social perspective, we still have a long way to go. Hundreds of years of racism will not disappear overnight," he added.
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