Mary C. Curtis was moved by the film, which premieres tonight:
Though most Americans no longer object to interracial unions, when a no-longer-enforced state law was placed on the ballot in South Carolina in 1998, 30 percent still favored the ban and 62 percent voted to toss it. A poll of likely Republican primary voters in that state last month showed 20 percent still saying interracial marriage should be illegal.
And that’s too close for comfort for me in next-door North Carolina. As a black woman married to a man of Norwegian-Irish-English descent, it was impossible to watch “The Loving Story” without thinking of my own walk down the aisle with my father, surrounded by family and friends in my home parish in Baltimore.
That traditional scene, played out like so many before and since, would have been just a dream until 1967, when Maryland repealed its state ban just before the Loving ruling.
The Dish 