One morning in the summer of 1958, a married couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, awoke to three policemen in their bedroom. These officers arrested Richard and Mildred, a white man and a black woman, for violating Virginia’s law that prohibited interracial marriage.

When the Lovings decided to appeal their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, 16 states had statutes banning interracial marriage. Bernard Cohen, the Lovings’ lawyer, repeated Richard’s own words during oral argument: “Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.” In a unanimous decision, the Court in Loving v. Virginia ruled in favor of the Lovings and declared unconstitutional all laws prohibiting interracial marriage.