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Your best friend’s Dad shows you how to do things, and he
makes you laugh. You like spending time at their house.
But what if there was a rule somewhere that said they
couldn’t be a family? In The Case for Loving by
Selina Alko, illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko,
there was once such a law, and the reason was black and
white.
Falling in love was very easy. Richard Loving and Mildred
Jeter did that right after they met, and it didn’t take long
for them to decide that they wanted to get married and raise
a family.
But there was one problem: Richard was white. Mildred was
“colored.” They didn’t think that was any big deal but in
Virginia in 1958, it was illegal for them to get married.
Yes, a simple wedding could land them in jail!
So Mildred and Richard went to Washington, D.C. and tied the
knot there. Family and friends went to the wedding, and
everybody was happy. The Lovings “couldn’t wait” to start
their new lives back home.
Not long after they were back in Virginia, though, the
police came in the middle of the night and said that the
Lovings’ marriage certificate was no good. They put Richard
and Mildred behind bars because their marriage was unlawful
– and that “was just awful!”
In order to stay out of jail for good, Richard and Mildred
had to leave their families and move to another state.
In Washington, D.C. again, the Lovings tried to settle in.
Richard got a job. Mildred had three children in “three
different shades of milk-chocolate brown.” But the city
wasn’t a good place for the Lovings. They missed their
families. They weren’t happy so, nine years after that
late-night visit by the police, because times had changed,
they hired lawyers to fight for the right to live in their
beloved Virginia…
For any adult who’s too young to remember Loving v.
Virginia (or any child who wasn’t born then), The
Case for Loving is a very informative, eye-opening book.
Author Selina Alko says in her notes that, as a Jewish white
woman, she finds it “difficult to imagine” that her marriage
(to illustrator Sean Qualls, an African American) might’ve
been illegal, fifty years ago. Kids might find that notion
to be almost “unbelievable,” too, given that they’ve never
known a world like one described here.
What parents will want to understand, however, is this: for
its four-to-eight-year-old target age group – particularly
for those on the younger end – this book could be
scary, especially the “taken away and locked up in jail”
part. For toddlers, that’s the stuff of nightmares, so be
warned.
Still, if you’re prepared to explain and you keep the
youngest audience members in mind, this could be a great
read-aloud book. The Case for Loving may become one
your kids will make noise for. |
