The filmmaker has a new documentary, slated to air on HBO for Valentine’s Day, about a local love story that changed history 45 years ago.
Who were the Lovings?
The Lovings were an interracial couple who married in the late ’50s. … She was part black and part Native American and he was white.
Why tell a story about them now?
Our society has become a blended society and many of us don’t realize how we came to be blended, why interracial marriage is as accepted and as commonplace as it is today. Many people don’t realize that it all began in many ways with the Lovings and their famous case, Loving v. Virginia, that went to the Supreme Court in 1967. When I decided to make the film, President Obama was then running for office.
The couple married in Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage wasn’t illegal, but later returned here from their hometown in Virginia?
They didn’t just return. They were exiled. It was a much more dramatic set of circumstances. They had been sentenced to a year in the penitentiary for committing a felony. But the judge agreed to suspend the sentence if they agreed to be banished from the state for 25 years. … They continued to kind of steal back to Virginia because they so desperately wanted to be with their family and their friends. And they wanted their children to be able to play in open spaces.
What most surprised you about the Lovings?
They really do make you think about stereotypes. Richard, who looked like a redneck and in fact was — he was a brickmason; he worked with his hands — he was a man of great principle. … Certainly I admired Mildred. She had a beautiful soul. So these two people who were not terribly educated turned out to be my heroes. — Kytja Weir
