Day: June 12, 2025

June 12, or Loving Day, is an unofficial holiday set aside to mark the anniversary of the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Loving finally affirmed the right of interracial couples to marry in all fifty states - and, not incidentally, legitimized the very existence of people like me into law - in the sixteen states where such unions were still illegal. In recognition of this anniversary, I have assembled a collection of thirty-two photos depicting both obvious and likely examples of such couples, most of them everyday people, from both before and after the Loving decision, as immortalized via the photographer's lens. Most are drawn from my vintage and antique photo collection.

Montana couple, circa late 1900s/early 1910s

Late nineteenth century Montana had its share of discriminatory practices, even if it was something of an outlier in the U.S. as a whole with its lack of enforced segregation in public schools, universal (male) suffrage, and (until 1909) lack of a law prohibiting interracial marriage between whites and non-whites. Discrimination and prejudice did of course exist, but this couple - if they were a couple, as they appear to be - apparently decided to weather those particular storms together. Photographer Victor Grigsby opened his first Livingston studio in early 1908, placing the time of this photo at around the end of the aughts or the 1910s.

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