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>> Abby Bogomolny: Okay.
Welcome to -- welcome, welcome, welcome.
Welcome to tonight's Work of Literary Merit
presentation to support teaching of the novel "Passing"
by Nella Larsen.
I'm Abby Bogomolny from the English Department.
We hope you will also join us next Wednesday, April 17th,
12 to 1, in Newman
for the WOLM lecture entitled More than a Catfight,
fear lies in social class in the lives
of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry.
At that talk, I will analyze the different class positions
represented by Irene and Claire in the novel but tonight,
we will view the loving story, the HBO documentary
that aired last year Valentine's Day 2012, to be exact.
The film introduces us to Richard and Mildred Loving
and their case against the State of Virginia
that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I'll say a few words about why this documentary is important
and why it's important that we consider the issues now followed
by Andre LaRue [phonetic] from the History Department
who will frame this case for us to start.
Before I begin though,
Anne Marie Insol [phonetic] is handing
out these pink brief surveys.
She's over here which I hope you will complete anonymously
and then pass the paper down to the end
of the row for her to pick up.
After the film, Anne Marie will pool and share the information
that you provide and hold a brief discussion.
Our event tonight is being videotaped.
If you have to leave before the program is through,
please exit quietly to your right to avoid walking
in front of the camera.
That's important and we thank you.
Also, there's a signup sheet
for Brenda Fliesmenshoff's [phonetic] students
in psychology classes as long --
as well as a staff development roster over there on the right.
Okay, that's all the business.
So why is this documentary important?
Well, Mildred and Richard Loving did not want to be heroes
and they did not set out to change the world.
Their struggle was a personal one
that people everywhere can identify with.
Mildred and Richard Loving simply wanted to live
as a married couple with their children
in the state of Virginia.
He was white.
She was part black and part Cherokee.
They're in love and they did not understand why their marriage
was a criminal offense.
Sixteen states across the U.S.
at that time had miscegenation laws that made marriages
between people of white and African ancestry illegal.
The Lovings' were banished from their homes
because of their commitment to each other
but because this case came up during a time when demand
for civil rights and demands for equality were taking place,
their personal story became not just their story
but everybody's story.
Even though this case is taught in law schools and in history
and political science courses in college,
this is the only full documentary of their life
and case that ended miscegenation here
in the United States,
miscegenation laws in the United States.
This film is interesting because it uses a different style
from the most popular documentaries.
It's shot in cinema verite footage.
It's shot by Abbott Mills [phonetic]
and this footage consists of their being home,
real life footage, then with their children, and speaking
with their ACLU lawyers, Phillip Hirschkopf
and Bernard Cohen combined with authentic footage
from the 1960s, interviews with their family and their friends
and documentary still is shot
by LIFE magazine photographer Gary Roulette [phonetic].
This film has the effect of taking us back in time.
So why it is important that we look at this story now today?
Well, there's a few -- there are few Supreme Court rulings
that have had the impact that the Loving case has had
on our culture and our politics.
For example, in 1967 had Barack Obama's white mother
and black father lived in one of the states when they married
that had miscegenation laws,
their marriage would've been a felony.
Today the struggle for same sex marriage has important civil
rights, parallels to the film we'll see tonight.
Both address basic human rights.
Both address rights that are conferred by the state
to validate the organization and stability of families.
As we'll hear from Andre,
the miscegenation laws had their basis and particular reasons
that the states had for not wanting
to grant particular rights but marriage is practical.
Whether or not we favor marriage as a social institution,
there's no denying that marriage confers many practical legal
and economic rights and protections.
For example, the Federal Accounting Office
of the Government, federal government,
in 2004 counted no less than 1,138 rights that impact people
who are granted the right to marry for the law.
Areas in which these rights fall are related to things
like social security, housing, food stamps, Veteran's benefits,
specific things are -- about inheritance or jointly owned,
real and personal property.
Benefits such as annuities, social security benefits,
Medicare benefits, spousal exemptions to property taxes
on the death of a partner, joint parenting, joint adoption,
foster care, custody, status for next of kin,
the hospital visits, domestic violence protection orders,
wrongful death benefits for surviving partner, bereavement,
sick leave, very, very practical issues that are denied
when people don't have that legal status.
[Background sounds]
In this year, 2013, U.S. Supreme Court will actually rule
on same sex marriage.
Just a few weeks ago, March 27th and March 28th of 2013,
Supreme Court heard arguments for two cases
that will affect the status of same sex marriage
in the U.S. These cases are one, Hollingsworth versus Perry
which is a challenge to the legality
of California Proposition 8,
the recent California Voter Initiative
that rendered previously legal same sex marriages to be illegal
in California on the grounds
that they violate the Constitution.
It gets complicated, you know following a ruling.
So we need a history guide to figure it out for us
but anyway, that's the basics.
The other case is United States versus Windsor.
The case that looks at whether a portion of the Federal Defense
of Marriage Act violates the Constitution's equal
protection clause.
Now the outcome of this case will be key
in determining whether the federal government has a right
to deny benefits, social security benefits,
and other benefits to same sex couples.
Okay. Well of importance to these cases is the concept
of marriage as a civil right not a religious one.
Today there are 9 states that allow same sex marriage
but these unions are not covered by federal protections.
Those states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Iowa,
Washington state, and then the District
of Columbia, Washington, D.C.
Well 46 years ago when Richard Loving's lawyers asked him
if he would like to give the Supreme Court Justices
a message.
He said, tell them I love my wife and that is --
and that it's unfair that I can't live
with her right here in Virginia.
For the Lovings it came down to personal issue.
The Supreme Court plans to announce its decisions
on the same sex marriage later this year in June.
So that's a little bit of comparison
and it's now my pleasure
to introduce Andre LaRue, faculty in history.
Please.
[ Clapping ]
>> Andre LaRue: Abby, thank you very much.
Can you all hear me?
>> Yes.
>> Andre LaRue: Thinking this thing is on.
Okay. One of the things that struck me that's interesting
about the Loving case and the Supreme Court,
the landmark ruling in 1967 that found that restrictions
on interracial marriage were unconstitutional
because they denied equal protection,
is that this is a case that grew out of the relationship
of a couple in Virginia.
And it's a case that made its way to the courts
and to the Supreme Court in 1967.
And there is that tendency to make that automatic association,
well of course this is something that happened in Virginia
because of course that is the South and because given
that history of the South, we know how those people are.
We understand that this is a region of the country
which is famous its closed mindedness,
its proventionalism [phonetic], its domination based
on a racial hierarchy at the time and I'd be fortunate
to live in an area of the country which is
and has been far more enlightened.
But that's where the whole thing breaks down because
as Abby stated, the laws against same sex marriage were enacted
in a variety of states and at one point, as many as 38 states
across the country had anti-miscegenation laws.
That means the majority of states, the majority
of territory compromising the United States
of America had enactments that were upheld state constitutions
or legislative acts that banned interracial marriage.
And at the source of that, of course, if we break it
down to its -- to the simplest explanation for why
that existed was that these restrictions
against interracial marriage were
about the perpetuation of white supremacy.
That in society that a large measure was based upon
structured hierarchies and one of the most important elements
of that structured hierarchy was race used as a means
of differentiating people and privileging some
and disadvantaging others that anything
that threatened the supposed lead categories
that defined people was seen as a threat to those who benefited
from this perceived white supremacy.
And it is something that also crossed class lines.
Certainly one could argue that there were those
that were very powerful, very wealthy who might benefit
from the continued perpetuation
of a social hierarchy based upon race but if we take it back
to the 19th century, we're talking
about a widespread assumption in American society that cut
across class lines to privilege one race over another such that,
this whole idea of special privileges and rights reserved
for certain people based on color was something
that was erased by the working class as much as it was
by the elite capitalist class.
And there's no place where that was better played out
or better demonstrated in California because at one point,
California was among those 38 states
in which interracial marriage was against the law.
It was a crime.
And the laws in California that mandated it as a crime were laws
that were drawn up at the time that California did,
in fact, become a state.
It was part of the original state constitution and that law
in California that interracial marriage was not overturned
by the state supreme court until 1948, post World War II.
So for most of California's history,
California shared a commitment to white supremacy
that was not unlike what existed in the South
in other places across the country.
What is interesting in California, however,
is that while the law was drawn
up to prevent interracial marriage between blacks
and whites, blacks at that time in California were a tiny,
tiny percentage of the overall population
but California would develop its own legacy
of discriminatory laws that racially separated people
with a concern for people of color
but not necessarily blacks being foremost in mind.
What do you imagine would be probably the groups
in California that might be the principle concern here?
California's early lawmakers --
>> [Inaudible].
>> Andre LaRue: Native Americans would certainly be one.
>> Hispanic.
>> Andre LaRue: Hispanic population would be another.
>> Chinese.
>> Andre LaRue: And the Asian population.
The first significantly large Asian population
in California would be the Chinese and if one looks
at the early debates within the state constitutional conventions
to draw up a new constitution, one of the primary concerns
in drawing up that state constitution was an attempt
to come up with [inaudible] definitions as who would befall
under the category of white and would fall outside of it
because again, the assumption was that in drawing
up state law, there must be a privileged position reserved
for those who could be defined as white.
Native Americans, how do you figure they were defined?
White or nonwhite?
>> Nonwhite.
>> Andre LaRue: They were, in fact,
in that early state laws defined as nonwhite.
Chinese, Japanese?
>> Nonwhite.
>> Andre LaRue: Nonwhite.
Mexicans?
>> Nonwhite.
>> They weren't included.
>> Andre LaRue: Well they're a special case
because they would happen to be a community
that by their very nature blurred that color line.
That automatically made it problematic.
I mean nonwhite people because of their Indian ancestry
but then white people because of that Spanish ancestry.
And of course, California was made up,
well at one time had been the sovereign nation of Mexico
and in the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848,
when the United States in a war of conquest takes
over literally half of Mexico.
And now claims it as its own,
it does inherit those former Mexican citizens
that now become part of the founding body
of politic of the United States.
Partly in order to maintain positive relations
with Mexico following war,
so because they felt there was some commitment based upon the
Treaty of [Inaudible], the Mexican population
in California would be defined
under the state constitution essentially as white
which means they could vote.
They could run for political office and a marriage
between a Mexican and a white person would not automatically
be defined as an interracial marriage and be banned
under the state constitution.
So there are some complexities here that grow out of it.
None of these complexities negate the idea that part
of drawing up this California constitution,
part of California's role in coming into the Union
as a new state, as it did in 1850,
that at its inception it included
in its constitution the preservation of white supremacy.
This also was interesting because, of course,
California enters the Union in 1850 as a free state.
At a time in which slavery was still a major institution
in the United States and there is, of course, the continued
and increasing political divisions based upon free states
versus slave states.
One of the initial debates
in California is what is California going to be?
And California did enter the Union as a free state
but because it was a free state.
That is a state in which slavery would not be a legal institution
does not mean that it was not a state that comes into the Union
with any different attitude when it comes toward white supremacy.
In fact, for much of the free state North,
opposition to slavery wasn't at all times necessarily associated
with a humanitarian concern for African Americans
and would let people suffer under slavery.
Part of that free state mentality was a mentality
that intended to keep the free states not only free of slavery
but free of black people.
Free as much as possible of people of color which means
that people could be antislavery on the one hand
and still be quite racist on the other.
And that racism would be played out in the laws in various
of the free states including California.
So in that sense even though California enters the Union
as a free state it is not surprising that California
at the same time would, in fact, enact legislation
that forbid interracial marriage.
[Background sounds]
However, it's also true that in 1948 when California did,
in fact, its Supreme Court did overrule or rule that the clause
in the state constitution that upheld laws
against interracial marriage, that it was, in fact,
the first state in the West to do so.
And this, of course, could be seen as establishing somewhat
of a precedent for the later decision some 19 years later
in Loving versus Virginia
in which the U.S. Supreme Court then sanctions interracial
marriage that applies to the entirety of the nation,
entirety of the country.
[Background sounds]
And so in that sense you could say that California,
in that particular regard would lead the pack
in a somewhat more progressive way on the action
of its state supreme court but coming in 1948,
that is still pretty late, isn't it?
This is after the second World War.
There's a lot of American history behind
that before California would finally come to that point
to be able to -- its Supreme Court to finally rule against,
bans against interracial marriage.
And why this tendency was so strong?
Why this would last so long in U.S. history is
that that sanction against interracial marriage is --
was essentially about the preservation of hierarchy
and the preservation of power.
It was, in fact, there to uphold white supremacy in the same way
that sanctions against same sex marriage are intended
to uphold heterosexual supremacy.
With the idea that a group
in power somehow always feels threatened if that power,
somehow, has to be shared with others.
And I think it is noteworthy that before she died
in an interview with Mildred Loving, that it was very clear
that she saw in her very famous case taken to the Supreme Court
that banned these strictures on interracial marriage,
she saw a definite connection between that and the demand
for same sex marriage.
She could see in Loving versus Virginia
as establishing a very important precedent.
And what is so interesting about that is it tells us something
about people who are simply trying to live their lives
as decent people, as caring people,
as loving people toward one another that in their having
to fight for the right to be able to do that.
They can then connect their struggle to the struggle
of other people who suffer from similar oppression.
And when people do that, when they make that connection
between their own battle and the battles of others,
that is when they move beyond supporters
of just one particular cause
that they have now universalized what they stand for.
And therefore, it becomes a struggle for human rights,
the struggle for all humanity not narrowly defined by race
or by *** orientation or by anything but that all
of these things have to be recognized and that laws
that are intended to oppress, the struggle has to continue
for those to overturned.
So I think this documentary here,
I think is a very important one for us to see
because what's most astounding about it is these are not people
who started out to be activists.
These are not people who necessarily started
out to say we are going to change the world.
These are just people who loved each other and wanted
to live their lives unmolested
by ownerist [phonetic] state power that was seeking
to oppress them and what they represented.
So thank you for being here tonight
and I think we can start the documentary.
Thank you.
[ Clapping ]
[ Silence ]
>> [Inaudible] documentary.
[ Clapping ]
>> Anne Marie: You know it's the second time I've seen it
but when I saw that he was killed by a drunk driver
at the end [inaudible].
It felt -- [inaudible] but you know, I wanted to ask how many
of you knew who the Lovings were because on --
I knew who they were kind of.
You know? I knew that they were the reason
that the Supreme Court eventually said in 1967
that it was illegal to keep people of different races
from marrying one another but that's all that I knew.
And it wasn't -- I saw this documentary
for the first time last month.
And I don't know how you felt watching it,
I'd like to ask you right now how you felt but I felt angry
that I didn't know about them.
I feel especially Mildred Loving who is more articulate
in that marriage is the American hero
and I don't know why I didn't know who she was really.
I mean we know Martin Luther King.
We know Rosa Parks.
We know Malcolm X and all those big names
from the Civil Rights Movement
but she's just this ordinary person
who [inaudible] Collin made that comment that that was one
of the most constitutional cases
that were brought before the Supreme Court.
And somehow, that history is left out.
And I was curious to see [inaudible] Abby and Andre
to see how many you knew who the Lovings were.
And you just might be curious to know that 66 percent
of you had never heard of them before that answered this.
And out of the 33 percent of you who did know the Lovings,
it's because you heard about them in one of your JC classes
over the last couple weeks.
So that leaves us within this room and I would just advise you
to consider this, there's 9 percent of us in this room
who knew who the Lovings were.
And there's something, perhaps, that you can do with that.
I don't know what it is but it's interesting the history
that we know and the history that we don't know.
And some of you might have been wondering too
as you're watching this, well what does this have to do
with the novel Passing and I'd like to invite us to talk
about that a little bit.
But Passing is a nice companion piece to this
in that Nella Larson [phonetic] is a character too who many
of you probably didn't know until you read Passing
in your English class.
And yet she's one of the towering figures I would argue
from the Harlem renaissance.
You know [inaudible] probably I'm sure.
You knew who Langston Hughes was but until recently,
until she was put back into the canon with the work
of different literary scholars,
many of us didn't even know who Nella Larson was.
I was an English major.
When I was in college, I had no idea.
I'd never heard that woman's name before.
I don't know if you did, Abby,
when you were studying literature.
She was not a name that I knew.
So it's just so interesting all the stories that we get told
and the stories that we don't get told.
And one of the beautiful things I think about this too is
that Richard Loving, as one of the lawyers was saying,
he's that archetypical redneck
and how easily we write each other off but he just wanted
to go home with his wife.
You know and he's exactly the sort
of person we would have loved to have written off as one
of those Southern guys who's not too educated or whatever.
And here is a man of great integrity
but I just thought you'd be curious to know how few
of us knew who the Lovings were and that's not to blame us.
That's more to ask why hasn't the culture put them
out there for us?
And then the other thing that you might be interested
to hear too with that last question,
how deeply there's a significant resistance
to interracial marriages today?
And 60 percent of you said no you don't
and 40 percent said yes you do
but I don't think the percentages are interesting.
I was sitting back there and I was tallying up the answers.
What I thought was interesting was how many of you wrote yes
and scratched out and put no or you scratched and put no.
Scratched out and put yes.
And some of you are like yes no yes no.
So the jury's still out on that one but I think you can see
from your own reactions to some of the people that were speaking
in here, well we almost laugh at them
because you think oh my goodness.
Was someone really saying that?
That's a testament to someone like Mildred or Richard Loving
who were very ordinary people and had a lot to do
with changing attitudes of even people in this room
and the way we look at marriage.
Interestingly, overwhelmingly in terms
of mixed marriages equating to the people in this room,
it's transreligious marriage that would host the most.
Transreligious marriage
and I hadn't notice it the first time I watched this documentary
but if you noticed in the Supreme Court case,
that was the analogy that one of the judges brought up.
He said well, would you say the same thing about transreligious?
So kind of interesting that that came up as well
but we're just curious.
We're not going to keep you here for a long time
but it's a new story for a lot of us.
What jumped out at you?
I mean you walk out of here, what's going to stay
with you do you think?
An image, a line, something someone said, a fact.
>> [Inaudible].
I just wanted to say, you know, as a student that has returned
after 22 years have elapsed from high school to junior college
and being in Mr. [inaudible]'s class and learning things
that I've learned from him
and Mr. Gailey [phonetic] in history.
There's been several times in class where I've started crying
because there's so many different things
that I never was taught when I was younger and I feel
like my whole generation, maybe in the 40s and the 50s,
I wonder how much that we didn't know.
That people still don't know today.
I think with the knowledge of how far it could go to help
so many different situations in life.
I had no idea all the things that were happening,
that really happened to the Indians.
That happened to the Chinese.
I mean just -- it goes on and on and on and on.
And I feel like it's changed who I am as a person in the way
that I look at everything in life and what I want
to do from here forward.
And I don't know what I would do even if [inaudible]
but I think this gives me that hope
that just even my voice can make a difference.
That somehow I can do something because look at their voice.
Look at it changed so much for so many --
for millions and millions of people.
So I'm really excited -- I've attended all 3 lectures
and I'm excited to see the next one.
And I'm just really grateful he's a great teacher
and I've really enjoyed the series
and the book and everything.
>> Anne Marie: Yeah.
It teaches us to see these things
but it also helps us realize some
of our attitudes where they came from.
You know the Lovings are a gift to all
of us whether we even knew who they were.
They have a lot to do with so many people saying what they
said in here.
That they don't have an issue with it.
A couple of people said what?
Why are you asking this?
So it kind of depends on how old you are and what color you are
and what experiences you've had how you've answered that
but we can attribute that in large part
to those two ordinary people.
Yeah and it's a gift to know about them.
Yes?
>> I had never heard about them.
And it was really fascinating to me, I could really relate.
My father is black and he was born
in Dixford, Mississippi, in 1932.
My mother was born in California and she's white.
She was born in 1935.
And they met when she was 17 and he was 20.
And he had started dating her --
>> Anne Marie: Oh my gosh.
>> -- and her mother which was actually her aunt was raising
her did not like that and had my father thrown in jail.
And so he went to jail because it was statutory ***
because you know anything she could use
to get him away from her daughter.
And eventually they married when she became 18.
And they've had 4 children.
And they're still married today.
My father is 80 years old and my mom is, you know,
3 years younger than him.
And they've -- she's never dated another guy.
They've never had any relationship problems.
They live out in the country.
>> What year did they get married?
>> They got married, I think, in 1953 because my oldest brother.
>> Anne Marie: So I'm curious.
Did you grow up knowing about Mildred and Richard Loving?
>> No, my parents kind of kept us isolated.
It was like us against the world.
They did not let us go out in the world.
So we were kind of held back and we didn't know a lot
because we lived in the country.
So we were very sheltered but they protected us, loved us,
and it was just amazing.
>> Anne Marie: So this is your story [inaudible] --
>> It's my story.
>> Anne Marie: Oh my gosh.
>> It's so amazing.
[Multiple speakers]
And I always had a problem when I filled
out questionnaires, I had to pick a race.
And I just was so irritated by it but now I'm seeing today,
I have choices where I can pick biracial
because if I just say I'm black, I'm denying my mother.
If I say I'm white, then it's like no you're not.
You know? It's just weird.
So I always had a problem with that like my image.
I wanted it both to be known.
Yeah.
>> Anne Marie: Oh my gosh.
You're the perfect audience.
>> Oh yeah, [inaudible] come to this.
I'm not even here for any class.
My girlfriend who's in my math class
and [inaudible] class told me about it.
I said oh I got to go.
So I take classes here but this is not, you know, my English.
I don't have to write a paper or anything.
[Laughter]
[Multiple speakers]
>> Anne Marie: And the fellow up here?
Yeah.
>> When you were asking what we thought, you know,
[inaudible] about the film and one thing
that I think the film suggests and I'd
like to hear your comments on it just -
it was suggested, obviously suggested at the beginning
of the talk that anti-miscegenation laws,
of course, had to do with white supremacy
and in our current situation
with Prop 8 anti-same sex marriage laws had to do
with heterosexual supremacy.
What I think another thing that the film points
out that I think is a connection between the two types
of supremacy is a sort of a religious supremacy.
In other words, it's what connects this case historically
to the current case, [inaudible] case now is a belief --
you know on the one hand there's racial supremacy.
On the other hand, there's lifestyle or *** supremacy
but I think there's also a type of sectarian supremacy
that says this way of understanding God is superior
to some other way of understanding God.
And I think that ties this case historically to the Prop 8 case.
So and I think the film brings
out that it doesn't make it the main issue but over
and over again, people are talking about this is God's will
or this is not God's will.
So in this case the supremacy it's a particular
religious viewpoint.
>> Anne Marie: Yeah.
It's so interesting that you say that because a film
or a documentary is a text just as a book or an article
or whatever it would be.
And text change according to the people who watch them
in the historical moment in which they're watched.
I don't know how many of you but when I watched it
for the first time, I had the Prop 8
in my mind the whole time.
I mean it's really hard to watch this movie
and just not naturally make that connection but it's hard
to watch it and not think of it.
And of course, the religion comes into it as well.
It's a definite subcontext, isn't it?
Yeah.
>> [Inaudible] Hugo Black who became, was in this case.
He, in 1921 just got this book today from a black woman,
United States diplomat, first black woman
in the Peace Corp. She sent to me this day
and here I'm coming to this program.
Hugo Black tried a case in Alabama in Birmingham
where a Methodist minister,
that's why you [inaudible] religion
up here tripped my [inaudible].
A Methodist minister shot a Catholic priest
because the Catholic priest performed a wedding
of the Methodist minister's white daughter and a black man.
And it went to trial.
And Hugo Black was the lawyer
who argued the religious dimension of this.
Fascinating and then when I saw him, oh my God, he's the one
who sat on the 19 -- this case.
>> Anne Marie: Well, you know the lawyers in here
who are studying -- are any of you studying to be lawyers
in this room, I wonder?
Or that's a dream of yours.
>> Legal secretary.
>> Anne Marie: Yeah, talk about a way to make a huge difference.
>> But this book has just come out.
I just received it today and it's by a lawyer
at Ohio State University who does --
she's a lawyer and she does a lot of stuff on race and study
of race ethnicity that she reviews the case in 1921 upon
where Hugo Black, all of a sudden how many years later
and the religious [inaudible], says a true love story of race
and religion in America, in Alabama.
>> Anne Marie: And Alabama's an interesting fact again,
too, isn't it?
[Laughter] And again I think it underlines all of our prejudices
as Californians, doesn't it?
You know, you think oh Alabama but yes.
>> Well I'm thinking back to then when we've got involved in,
I think it was about 40 years ago and we got involved
in the marriage equality [inaudible] on.
And one of the things back then
that I could really [inaudible] I think it was [inaudible]
who came out with well they can change their constitution or not
but they are not changing mine.
Like that's how I felt about it all along.
We were right.
They're wrong and that's all there is to it.
>> Anne Marie: And that -- Richard Loving said very little
because he said what he needed to say which I love my wife
if that's just what it came down to.
I was noticing too some of you are laughing at how --
what's the word for him?
How tourist [phonetic] he is.
He didn't speak a lot and I love the interview with his mom
because she's just not [laughter] again,
culturally maybe as Californians at this moment and time,
we tend to -- if we were in an interview we would gab away.
Well yes I like them.
Yeah, you know, yeah --
>> That's the [inaudible].
I noticed that he wasn't saying that much at all
and maybe that's what the lawyer wanted him
to do just stop talking.
[Inaudible] probably runs in the family.
[Laughter]
You were right about that was that's all he wanted to say.
He didn't want to get [inaudible].
He didn't want to create this big, big, big [inaudible].
He didn't [inaudible] bigger in history books.
All he wanted to do was just live a life
and that's all he asked for.
And so I just thought it's -- you know, I didn't expect him
to have all these great speeches like Martin Luther King
or you know, Malcolm X. It's really short, I love my wife.
[Multiple speakers]
>> Anne Marie: I was really struck by that as well and
yet it's the people who talk a lot
that get all the attention, don't they?
You notice he's -- obviously this is a story about class too
and a lot of that [inaudible] expressed there.
And he's very shy even with his teeth.
You know like he -- I don't know if that's part of it
but you can see him looking down and he doesn't want to talk
but he's beautifully eloquent in the brevity of what he says.
He's perfectly eloquent.
>> [Inaudible] go to -- I think the [inaudible].
>> Fear of persecution or fear of jail?
[Multiple speakers]
>> Anne Marie: Yes.
In the back, we'll take one more comment, yeah.
>> I'm curious [inaudible].
[Multiple speakers]
>> That's okay.
First of all, I would like to say
that I'm greatly appreciative of you guys putting
on a documentary like this for us this evening because things
like this need to be shown more.
Second, I'm not angry that I didn't know about this.
I am kind of disappointed.
I'm not surprised that a lot of didn't know about this
because a lot of us grew
up in the American education system, K through 12.
And in the K through 12 American education system,
we're taught a very Eurocentric form of education.
So it's not surprising that a lot of us don't know
about these type of figures.
Unfortunately, our younger generation is still growing
up in this very Eurocentric form of education
and they're not going to be taught about characters
like this and people that did things like they're doing also.
So I think it's up to us to kind of try to spread the word out
and try to get it known that people like [inaudible].
>> Anne Marie: Yeah, that's an incredibly valid point
and so many of these things play into it.
There's the race issue, obviously.
There's the class issue.
There's the issue that as this young man was saying
that Richard was not an eloquent man.
There's not a lot you can quote, you know?
And class again, class, I think, maybe something
to do with it as well.
>> Well [inaudible] if you get to college
and you can actually get taught critical thinking
and then the focus more so is on critical thinking as opposed to,
you know, a specific president or this specific president.
[Inaudible] much more worldly, well rounded [inaudible]
and I just appreciate you guys [inaudible].
>> Anne Marie: Well thank you
and when we're critical thinking,
thinking about what we read and what we don't read, you know?
Where the silence is and where the gaps are?
It's real interesting but thank you.
I love this documentary too.
>> I love documentaries in general.
[Laughter]
>> Anne Marie: I was telling my class, we need to get together
and make a Mildred Loving t-shirt
because to me, she rocks.
She's an incredible female American figure too
and maybe I'm saying that because she was more articulate.
She said more but don't you just love her?
>> Andre LaRue: Yeah.
>> Oh, she --
[Multiple speakers]
>> Anne Marie: I'm like -- go ahead.
>> I just wanted to say I first heard about the Lovings
from my son, Noah, who's in 10th grade
at a high school called [inaudible] High School.
It's a new charter high school in [inaudible].
>> [Inaudible].
>> He has a history class called Civil War Civil Rights
and he had come home one day talking about this couple.
And then when I heard that they were going
to show the documentary, I'm like [inaudible] Abby
over here, I was like wow, okay.
I must learn about this
and I had no idea it was so [inaudible].
You know? But --
>> Anne Marie: Well maybe an answer
to the fellow in the back.
Maybe things are changing and Steven Spielberg, he did it.
>> [Off mic] schools and private schools --
charter schools in general becoming more popular
because the parents are becoming more aware of the K
through 12 education system is teaching a very Eurocentric form
of education.
It's also not being very beneficial
in educating our kids in general.
>> Yeah that's true.
>> Maybe that's true --
[Multiple speakers]
>> United States, we're ranked 23rd in math, 17th in reading.
I think that it is very [inaudible].
[Background sounds]
>> Anne Marie: All right,
well thank you all so much for coming.
[Clapping]
And talk about the Lovings with your friends and family.
Tell people about them because we all want to know.
Yeah.
[Background sounds]
[ Silence ]