On May 2, last year, the quiet passing of Mildred Loving ended one of the landmark legal episodes in the continuing American quest to establish our freedoms. At 68 when she died, she left a legacy not only for her three children, nine grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren, but she left one for all of us. In 1958 Mildred Jeter and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, traveled 80 miles northward to Washington, D.C. from Virginia to be married. When they came back to their native Caroline County a few days later, they were arrested in their bedroom and charged with violating the state's anti-miscegenation laws. There was nothing unusual about the couple “except that Richard was of European-American descent and Mildred claimed both African-American and Native American blood in her veins. Despite such an American heritage, Virginia citizens of different race or color were forbidden by law to marry, cohabitate, or have sexual relations. The Lovings were given a suspended 25-year prison sentence in 1959 with the condition that they leave the state forever. The couple moved to Washington, D.C. but they did not give up on returning to the state they had called home for their entire lives. In 1967, after many courageous court challenges and, with the participation from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the American Civil Liberties Union, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law. After the momentous decision, the Lovings returned to live quietly in Virginia for the remainder of their lives. This courageous couple had secured for us Americans the right to choose our marital partners without restrictions on race or skin color. On December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks disobeyed driver James Blake's order that she surrender her seat to a white passenger on a crowded Montgomery, Alabama bus, she was only doing what several other African American women like her had already done “and won as early as 1946." For her