Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers, the book written by Phyl Newbeck, resumes the case of Mildred Loving, a black woman whose battle through the courts to marry a white man and to be able to live where they wanted changed the Supreme Court’s position over interracial marriages. She died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va.. She was 68.

Mildred met her future husband, Richard, when she was 11 years old and he was 17. As they grew older, their relationship developed into a romantic love story. Mildred married Richard when she was 18 on June, 1958 in Washington, D.C. Mildred's father and one of her brothers were the witnesses at their wedding ceremony. "They picked the name of a minister from a phone book and, immediately after the ceremony, got back in the car, and returned to Central Point," Phyl Newbeck notes in his book.

Five weeks after the wedding, they were awakened at 2 a.m. by police and arrested for being married to one another. They were sentenced to one year in jail, accused of interracial marriage. During their time in jail, Mildred and Richard were forced to live on separate floors. The court suspended the sentence on the condition that the couple leave the State and not return to Virginia for 25 years.

Mildred wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy forwarded the letter to the American Civil Liberties Union and attorney Bernard S. Cohen took their case. After nine year, their case was heard before the US Supreme Court and the decision was in their favor.

"I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about," Mildred wrote in her “Loving for All” statement.

“We loved each other and got married,” she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. "We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants."

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," as they are guaranteed by The Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State” the court wrote in its decision.