Civil rights in America were won by the actions of courageous individuals. Many of them are now household names — Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and three young men named Michael Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman. Others are less well known. In that category belongs Mildred Loving, who died May 2. No White House statement marked her death, nor did any of the three major candidates for president issue a press release mourning her. Yet her name will live on in one of the landmarks of our law. It is known as Loving v. Virginia.

That was the 1967 case in which the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Warren, struck down a conviction of Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, for violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute. On January 7, 1959, the Lovings, who had married in the District of Columbia and then moved to the Old Dominion, pleaded guilty to violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. A trial judge sentenced them to a year in jail but suspended the sentence on the condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years, writing in his opinion, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

At the time, Virginia was one of 16 states banning interracial marriages. The Supreme Court found the law violated both the equal protection and the due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. In some ways it is easy to understand why Mildred Loving is an unlikely hero. Interracial marriage had opponents among both races and is still, in some quarters, controversial. In the constitutional debate, the issue of interracial marriage has become intertwined with that of same-sex marriage, so that those who think that same-sex marriage is a state issue to be settled in their legislatures, as we do, may be accused of hypocrisy for praising the high court’s decision in Loving. All the greater the courage and triumph of Mildred Loving, who deserves to be remembered and honored by all of us who live in a country that is better for the victory she won in the case that bears her name.