For marrying the man she loved, Mildred Loving paid a price: She was arrested, convicted and banished from her home state. In the 1950s, Virginia handed down such punishments to couples whose love the state did not sanction: She was black. Her husband, Richard, was white. Their union was prohibited by law. The marriage could have collapsed under the hammer of Jim Crow. Instead, the Lovings' challenge of the law led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1967 that toppled bans on interracial marriages nationwide and opened the door for mixed-race couples to marry without prosecution. For Loving, a soft-spoken, gentle woman who eschewed the limelight, the issue was always simple: "I think marrying who you want is a right no man should have anything to do with," Loving said in 1967. "It's a God-given right." Loving, 68, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Central Point, Va.
Irvine Robbins, who as co-founder of Baskin-Robbins brought Pralines 'n Cream and other exotic ice cream concoctions to every corner of America, has died at age 90 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
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