Forty-five years ago, in 1967, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in their home in the middle of the night, 5 weeks after their marriage. The Lovings were living in Virginia, one of several states at the time that banned inter-racial marriages, and they were forced to move out of state and relocate to DC.
The Lovings sued the state of Virginia; their case was eventually heard by the Supreme Court, which declared all state laws banning inter-racial marriages unconstitutional. LIFE photographer Grey Villet visited the couple at their home in Virginia, before the outcome of the Supreme Court case, where they had secretly moved into another county in order to be closer to their family. His intimate photographs of the Lovings and their children are a beautiful portrait of their love for each other in the midst of so much turmoil.
Villet's photographs were discovered by director Nancy Buirski, who founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, NC, and featured in her documentary, The Loving Story. The photographs are on view at the International Center of Photography in New York until May 6, 2012.
