Loving Day 2027 is on Saturday

About Loving Day

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving grew up in Caroline County, Virginia. Virginia classified her as "colored" and him as white, and state law barred them from marrying, so in 1958 they wed in Washington, D.C., and came home. Weeks later police arrested them in their bedroom at night. A judge sentenced them to a year in prison but suspended it on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. In 1963 Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, whose office pointed her to the American Civil Liberties Union, and lawyers Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop took the case.

The Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia on June 12, 1967. In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren, it held that Virginia's ban, rooted in the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time Virginia was one of 16 states that prohibited and punished marriages across racial lines, and the ruling ended all of those laws. In 2022 the Respect for Marriage Act wrote into federal law that no state may deny recognition to a marriage on the basis of the couple's race, ethnicity, national origin or sex.

Loving Day itself is a grassroots tradition. According to the Loving Day project, designer Ken Tanabe, the son of Japanese and Belgian immigrants, began it as his graduate thesis at Parsons School of Design in New York and launched it publicly in 2004 with a first event in New York City. Eugene, Oregon, gave it its first official recognition in 2005, and cities, counties and a few states have since followed. It is not a federal holiday.

The day carries special meaning for interracial couples, multiracial families, mixed-race people and transracial adoptees, but the project invites everyone to take part through gatherings, shared photos and learning about the case.

Sources: Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) (Cornell Legal Information Institute), Loving Day project: The Loving Day Story (archived copy), Loving Day project: Our Project and history (archived copy), 28 U.S.C. 1738C, added by the Respect for Marriage Act (Cornell Legal Information Institute). How we check dates.

How to mark Loving Day

• Read the Supreme Court's short opinion in Loving v. Virginia, which is freely available online and takes about 20 minutes.
• Watch a documentary or film about Richard and Mildred Loving with friends or family and talk about it afterward.
• Host or attend a Loving Day picnic or potluck that brings together couples and families of different backgrounds.
• If your family is multiracial, record older relatives' stories about how they met and what marrying meant in their time.
• Ask your city or county whether it recognizes Loving Day, and learn how residents have requested proclamations elsewhere.

Loving Day dates