New in Paperback

Virginia Hasn't Always Been For Lovers

Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving

Phyl Newbeck

 

Paper, 0-8093-2857-7
978-0-8093-2857-4, $19.95t
336 pages, 6 x 9, 18 Illus.
American History / Civil Rights / Law

Also in Cloth

For sale in North America only

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Presenting the first book-length history of Loving v. Virginia and antimiscegenation laws

This landmark volume chronicles the history of laws banning interracial marriage in the United States with particular emphasis on the case of Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a black woman who were convicted by the state of Virginia of the crime of marrying across racial lines in the late 1950s. The Loving's were not activists, but their battle to live together as husband and wife in their home state instigated the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that antimiscegenation laws were unconstitutional, which ultimately resulted in the overturning of laws against interracial marriage that were still in effect in sixteen states by the late 1960s.

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“Phyl Newbeck’s Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers is a clearly written, accessible, well-organized, and remarkably researched history of the path-breaking Loving case. . . .  Of particular interest is Newbeck’s seemingly indefatigable effort to interview everyone involved in Loving and other significant cases and her assiduous efforts to track down the documentary record.”—Michael Meltsner, Harvard Law School and Northeastern Law School

“Newbeck’s exploration of the antimiscegenation laws in America touches the very core of racial discrimination and race hatred in America: sexual intimacy between races. Using the Loving's as the tale-telling prism, she does an excellent job of illuminating the dreadful life—and happy death—of these racist laws and folkways.”—Howard Ball, author of Murder in Mississippi

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A graduate of Barnard College and New York Law School, Phyl Newbeck is a licensed attorney and the director of the Vermont Teacher Diversity Scholarship Program.