We can't imagine living in a world where we couldn't marry the person we love based on race (even though we live in a world where people can't marry they people they love based on gender). But it was only 43 years ago that Mildred Loving, a black woman, and her white husband were forced out of their home state of Virginia after being charged with "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth."
Not content to sit by quietly, the Lovings filed what would become a landmark US Supreme Court case, and won. On June 12, 1967, the court ruled that any ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional.
Eight years later, Loving's husband died in a car accident and last week Mildred Loving died of pneumonia.
Her daughter, Peggy Fortune, told the Associated Press: "I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble—and believed in love."
[Yahoo!: Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies]