13. Mildred and Richard Loving
By quietly challenging Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, the Lovings changed the course of civil rights with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, legalizing interracial marriage nationwide. In 1958, Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of African American and Native American descent, married in Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage was legal. Upon returning to their hometown in Virginia, they were arrested for violating the state’s anti-miscegenation laws. The couple’s legal battle culminated in the 1967 Supreme Court decision, which declared such laws unconstitutional, affirming the fundamental right to marry regardless of race (britannica.com).
