The Loving Story

The love these two people had for one another was genuinely real, and watching them and their beautiful children in the archival footage tugged at your heartstrings. I watched this documentary when it was first shown on HBO, and thought it was engrossing. I was 20 yrs. old when this case was finally decided, and I remember it vaguely. I lived in the North and had known that interracial marriage was illegal in the South, but never realized that couples were actually persecuted and jailed as the Loving couple were. The young ACLU lawyers who took the case are shown interacting with the couple in the l960's, and they also add present day commentary.

This is not meant to be a documentary about the legal machinations of the case (altho some of that is explained); but It's a compelling story about the human aspects of the case.

This HBO documentary is about a famous case that went to the Supreme Court back in the 1960s. It seems that Mr. and Mrs. Loving were different races and, believe it or not, back in 1958 when they married, such a mixed marriage was illegal in almost half the states in the US! The story about Mr. and Mrs. Loving is very, very compelling. You can't help but be pulled into the film because they were so wronged by the state of Virginia. And, I loved the movie dramatization about them ("Mrs. and Mrs. Loving"). However, "The Loving Story" is good but flawed--mostly because the folks at HBO forgot to caption the film. While this always irritates me (since my daughter is deaf and I am somewhat hard of hearing), it's more of a problem here because many of the clips used were old and heavily accented--and many folks would struggle to understand all of this. Being a Southern American would make understanding the accents easier. Overall, well worth seeing--but a bit flawed due to sound issues.

Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga) fall in love and want to get married when Mildred finds out she's pregnant. It's 1958 in Carolin County, Virginia and interracial marriages are illegal. They drive to Washington, D.C. to get married where it is legal and return to Virginia. The state does not recognize the marriage and they are arrested. The Lovings story and their legal case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court and becomes a landmark case in marriage laws.

This is a movie everyone should see, it's a reminder to us all how different and difficult life was for a large part of the population or for those who did not follow societal laws.

The Loving Story (2011)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Richard and Mildred Loving were simple folks from Virginia who found themselves in jail and forced to move out of the state. All of this was due to him being a white man and her being a black woman, which at the time was against the law. This documentary covers this period in their life as well as the Supreme Court ruling, which would change history.

This story was turned into a motion picture in 2016 and while that film was quite good, this documentary is certainly the better of the two. What makes this one here so interesting is that we get interviews with some of the police that arrested the Loving's as well as interviews with the lawyers who took their case to the Supreme Court. We also get interviews with the Loving family, which were recorded as all of this was actually going on.

If you're interested in the subject then there's no question that you'll be entertained by this documentary. The filmmakers did a very good job at explaining what the laws were at the time as well as the entire process of getting the case to the Supreme Court. The interviews with the original lawyers was certainly a major plus as were the archival interviews with the Loving family.

This documentary is about the 1967 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case striking down anti-miscegenation statutes as unenforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment.

I read about Loving v. Virginia in law school and marveled at the bravery of the couple in question (a white man and black woman) who were prosecuted for leaving their home state of Virginia to marry in D.C. and then returning to Virginia where they were harassed by law enforcement and ultimately prosecuted as felons for miscegenation.

The documentary (which consists almost entirely of contemporaneous black and white footage) offers (and needs) little narration as the Lovings and their attorneys describe the events that led to the historical legal ruling.

While interracial marriage attracts little notice in most populous areas of America today, at the time the Lovings were prosecuted (1958) 21 states had anti-miscegenation statutes on their books. (Indeed, notwithstanding the 1967 decision, the last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law was Alabama in 2000.) I saw the film at the Tribeca Film Festival tonight and as a wonderful bonus, the Lovings' youngest child, Peggy Loving Fortune, appeared and shared her personal feelings and recollections. (Her parents are deceased; Mrs. Mildred Jeter Loving died of pneumonia in 2008, and Mr. Richard Loving died in a automobile accident in 1975.) The film was made in part by HBO, so perhaps HBO will air it at some point.