ROCK SPRINGS – The fourth documentary in the Western Wyoming Community College/Hay Library-sponsored public film discussion series, “Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle,” will screen on Thursday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. in Room 1302 on the Rock Springs campus. The film, “The Loving Story,” is an HBO-produced documentary about Richard and Mildred Loving, whose interracial marriage in 1960s’ Virginia, where intermarriage was illegal, led to a landmark civil-rights case and a Supreme Court decision that overturned such laws nationwide.
This two-hour screening is free and open to the public, and campus and community members are strongly encouraged to participate. On Thursday, Feb. 20, from 7-9 p.m., Assistant Professor of History and Political Science Jessica Clark, Ph.D., will show clips from and lead a discussion about the film. Audience members and others who are interested in the topic are encouraged to attend this activity, as well.
Richard Loving, who was white, married his fiancée, Mildred Jeter, who was half African-American and half-Cherokee, in 1958 in Washington D.C., where such marriages were legal. But when the couple returned to their home state of Virginia, where intermarriage was against the law, the newlyweds were arrested, tried and convicted under the state’s “miscegenation” laws. To avoid prison, they agreed to relocate out of the state, with the understanding that only one of them could return to visit family and friends at any one time.
But the Lovings missed their home and wished to return. Several years later, on the advice of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the couple contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, and two young ACLU attorneys took on the case, which eventually made it to the Supreme Court. The Court’s ruling, on June 12, 1967, marked the end for such laws, which, at that time, were on the books in 21 states.
The “Created Equal” film series is a year-long public discussion project that focuses on assorted aspects of the civil-rights struggle in America. Previous movies have looked at slavery and the abolitionist movement, the post-Civil War practice of forced labor for many African Americans, and the success of an African-American unit of the U.S. Life-Saving Service in North Carolina in the late 19th century.
The final film in the series, “The Freedom Riders,” will screen on Tuesday, April 8, from7-9 p.m. “The Freedom Riders” is a highly acclaimed examination of the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s, when civil-rights activists, black and white, rode buses through the Deep South to protest racial segregation, at the risk of their own lives and freedom. A discussion will follow on Tuesday, April 15, from 7-9 p.m.
All screenings and discussions will be held in Room 1302. Discussions will include clips from the film screened the previous week.
Western Wyoming Community College and the Hay Library are pleased to present this film discussion series in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Bridging Cultures.
