A reminder of just how far we've come:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.
Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble - and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
Members of Gen Y are said to think in much less racial terms than previous generations, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest this is so. A lot of it has to do with what they've experienced in their lifetimes and what they haven't experienced as well. Miscegenation laws were once commin in the United States, and it's still startling to realize they weren't declared unconstitutional until 1967. It's at least one measure of progress that kids today consider the very idea of forbidding cross-racial marriages preposterous.
