I’ve been happily married for 10 years, and my wife and I are looking forward to many more years together. But if we’d been married more than 50 years ago, our relationship would not have been recognized in parts of the country.
That’s because at that point there were 16 states that still had laws on the books banning interracial marriage. I’m white. My wife is black.
On June 12th, 1967, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Loving v. Virginia case that overturned those state laws, declaring bans on interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. That ruling later paved the way for the 2015 ruling that also granted same sex couples the right to marry.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Loving v Virginia, my wife Farrah Parkes and I are collaborating on a new podcast. It’s called the Loving Project, featuring interviews with interracial married couples, telling us about their thoughts and experiences.
While the country has come a long way in terms of civil rights over the past few years, there’s still a long way to go, and couples in interracial relationships often face challenges that may be unique to their situations. The podcast gives some of those couples a chance to tell their stories.
We hope to produce a new episode every other week over the course of the year, and the first episode is already live.
You can listen at LovingProject.com, subscribe in iTunes, or follow the show on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.
Or you can just click the play button above to listen.
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