When the movie was conceived and launched, intermarriage between African-Americans and Caucasians was still illegal in fourteen states. Towards the end of production, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia. The Loving decision was made on June 12, 1967, two days after the death of Spencer Tracy, who had played a "phony" white liberal who grudgingly accepts his daughter's marriage to a Black man. In Loving, the High Court unanimously ruled that anti-miscegenation marriage laws were unconstitutional. In his opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under the American Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

Film

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