:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/OJ7Z2JHMQNEMFDHLANH44ZI5OM.jpg)
It’s June 12, 2020.
It’s been almost three weeks since Silena and Sean Chapman brought home their third baby, Kevin.
Silena, a doctor who specializes in caring for sick and premature infants, is full of energy and says she’s always getting into some idea or another.
Sean is reserved and gentle. He spends most of his days taking care of their two other young children. He’s getting ready to start a woodworking business out of the Chesapeake couple’s Great Bridge garage.
Early that morning in downtown Norfolk, a crane removes 16-foot-tall Johnny Reb, the bronze Confederate soldier who sat atop a city monument for 113 years.
Silena knows the statue well. She lived for years on College Place, just a few blocks from it.
Before she moved to Norfolk from Chicago, she said she had to brace herself, knowing things like the Confederate monuments would just be around.
For her, the now-removed monument represents “separatist ideas” and is a symbol of racism. The best way forward, she says, is with “symbols of inclusivity and integration.”
By chance or serendipity, June 12 is also an unofficial holiday.
Known as Loving Day, it marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that struck down Virginia’s interracial marriage ban. It’s named for Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple at the center of the ruling.
Silena’s sister-in-law pointed out the connection — the Confederate statue coming down on Loving Day.
“For me, it clicked. That story is very important to us as a family,” Silena said. “If (the ruling) hadn’t happened on the 12th of June, my family wouldn’t be legal or exist.”
Silena is Black, just as Mildred Loving was. Sean is white, as was Richard.
Now, the Chapmans are spearheading an effort to put a monument to the Lovings at Main Street and Commercial Place, where Johnny Reb once stood.
They’ve put up a Facebook page called “Norfolk is for Loving,” a riff on the long-time state slogan “Virginia is for Lovers,” and started a petition that has more than 200 signatures.
“The best way to replace a monument that was so divisive in the past is with one that is about coming together and celebrating love,” Silena said. “It’s a beautiful American story.”
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/PRQBB2C7SJC2FONZLZ3JI3ZUV4.jpg)
___
Richard and Mildred Loving’s tale has all the drama of a Hollywood blockbuster.
It’s 1958 in Caroline County.
A man and a woman — one white, one Black — fall in love. Mildred becomes pregnant. Richard knows it’s not legal to marry across racial lines in Virginia. So the couple heads to the nation’s capital to skirt the law and get a marriage license.
Weeks later, sheriff’s deputies kick in their door and arrest both Richard and Mildred, basically saying the Washington wedding certificate wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on in the Old Dominion.
The Lovings plead guilty to violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited the marriage of whites and nonwhites. Given the choice of serving a year in jail each or leaving the state for at least 25 years, the couple chose exile and moved to Washington, D.C. Eventually, the longing to return to their home state became too much to bear.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Richard and Mildred challenged the law prohibiting their union in 1964. After years of court battles, the Supreme Court unanimously declared on June 12, 1967, that laws forbidding marriage between races were unconstitutional. At that time, 16 states in America still had such laws.
The Lovings headed home to Virginia, victorious.
In the years since, the couple’s story has become a symbol for many of the triumph of love over hate. It’s been chronicled extensively in books and on film, including “Loving,” a big-screen biopic starring Ruth Negga and Joel Edgarton from 2016.
And June 12 became Loving Day — an unofficial holiday created by a college student in 2004 to celebrate mixed-race marriage.
Richard Loving died in a car accident in 1975. Mildred Loving, who never remarried, died in 2008.
___
Silena said she’d never heard the Lovings’ story, or the history of how America undid its bans on interracial marriage, until that 2016 film.
“It’s crazy that the first time I heard about it was as an adult, from the movie,” she said. “It was a turning point in this country for people and families.”
Today's Top Stories
By the time the movie came out, Silena and Sean had been together for five years, and married for three.
[ Previous coverage: Norfolk removes Confederate soldier statue from downtown monument ]
Norfolk leaders have not decided what will go at the city-owned site where the Confederate monument used to sit, but say city officials are considering public art options. At a public hearing Tuesday night, the City Council was expected to hear comments on a proposal to relocate the Confederate monument — which is now in storage — to Elmwood Cemetery.
Before it was removed, the monument had become a focal point for protests about racism and social justice. Official efforts to move it out of downtown have been underway since August of 2017.
For Sean, replacing Johnny Reb with the Lovings is about “seeing change no matter where you look.”
Putting up something dedicated to the couple and their Supreme Court fight would serve as a history lesson for something that doesn’t pop up in a lot of textbooks but changed daily life for many.
“These are the types of ideas we want to light a flame under as a reminder that love will always replace hate,” Silena said.
Ryan Murphy, 757-739-8582, ryan.murphy@pilotonline.com