We are excited to partner with various organizations and businesses as well as the City of Cambridge, MA to bring a series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision.
Loving Day Cambridge 2017 events will offer welcoming and celebratory spaces for individuals and families of all colors and cultures. Each event is open and free to the public and designed to reflect and promote inclusion, equity and the right to marry regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, physical and mental disability, sexual orientation or religion.
Celebrate Loving Day 2016 by signing the petition! And then spread the word to everyone you know.
Mixed Roots Stories is proud to be apart of this collaborative effort initiated by Loving Day (www.lovingday.org). Find out about other collaborators and ways to supper – here.
Here are some of their suggestions on ways to share on social media:
Sample posts (Twitter friendly):
Get #LovingDay in the @WhiteHouse in 5 seconds. Sign the petition https://wh.gov/isdTY#multiracial #mixedrace
Celebrate millions of #multiracial Americans & families. Sign the #LovingDay petition https://wh.gov/isdTY
“This body of work is called, “The Lovings”. I discovered them last year during my last semester in art as an undergrad at OSU. At that time I was working on a series of paintings about underdog heroes. As the work developed I focused on the Lovings and their story. While working on The Lovings body of work I, myself made a personal revaluation. If it were not for the Lovings, I would not have the soul mate I have in my life right now. At that time, I realized that I was in an inter-racial relationship. At that time we had already been married five years. Thanks to the Lovings, not only am I able to be married to my soul mate. I realized that the heart is blind and that pure love transcends all in the first place.”
Tif can be found on Facebook and Twitter at: Tif Pruitt.
The University of Maryland College Park’s interns from the Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy celebrate Loving Day year round. They came up with a visual campaign to educate their peers about what Loving Day is all about. Students give a balloon and lollipop with the story of the Lovings attached and are asked to tweet and Instagram photos with the balloons before passing them on to another student. These photos are from 2014 and 2015.
The Community Organizing Students Interns (COSI) were asked by Naliyah Kaya, PhD, the Coordinator of Multiracial & Multicultural Student Involvement & Advocacy, if they knew how the Lovings were. They were then asked to research it and come up with a way to share it and celebrate the day with their peers. We love what the COSIs came up with!
Office of Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy (MICA)
Adele H. Stamp Student Union @ The University of Maryland College Park
Look at that love being passed from student to student!
Over Memorial Day weekend, the Mixed Roots Stories team gathered for our annual retreat. We spent two days evaluating where we have been and planning where we want to go.
We spent time looking at our mission and vision and decided it needed slight revising to more accurately represent what we do. This is what we came up with:
Revised Vision
A world that recognizes how it benefits from otherness, one that both celebrates and challenges identity categories in order to create more liberatory possibilities for our collective futures.
Revised Mission
Supporting and advocating for diverse Mixed communities through the power of sharing stories. We seek to act as a liaison, creating space between storytellers across academic and non-academic communities, and international and national contexts.
We began planning for the upcoming CMRS events. We also finalized our plans for this year’s Loving Day online event, and began planning for 2016 and 2017 Loving Day events.
We were excited to have our new board members Kaily Heitz and Stephanie Sparling Williams join us! They bring a wealth of experience, knowledge and energy to the team and are launching new student, community, and organization outreach as well as Arts & Education programing.
This weekend the MXRS team got together in preparation for our commemoration of Loving Day 2015: Visualizing Loving Day. This year we thought it would be fun to celebrate the radical love of Richard and Mildred Loving, as well as the pivotal Supreme Court Ruling allowing interracial couples to marry by creating a mixed-media collage. Check out what we did and share your own Visualizing Loving Day projects, activities, and stories!
Materials:
Printed Copy of The Loving’s Story (Print story from www.lovingday.org : here)
Small Canvas
1 Pack of Sticker Numbers & Letters
1 Tube of Paint in a Color of Your Choice (acrylic works best, but tempora will work too!)
Sponge brush or old dish sponge
Decoupage or Mod-Podge
Glue Stick
Scissors
Old Magazine
How to:
Step 1: Read the Loving’s Story. If you are doing the project with friends and family members, discuss what this story means for you and why learning their story is important. If you are doing the project with children consider “The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage” by Selina Alko.
Step 2: Cut or tear images, colors, interesting words, and/or textures from the magazine. Collage pieces together with quotes from the Loving’s story and adhere to your canvas using the glue stick. TIP: Concentrate color and meaningful text in the center of the canvas. Bright colors and unique textures work best.
Step 3: Once you are satisfied with your collage, use the Mod-Podge to seal your design. Let this dry completely (at least 20 minutes).
Step 4: Once your collage has dried use the sticker letters to spell “Loving 1967,” or “Loving Day 1967”.
After the stickers are secured to your collage in a place of your choosing, use sponge to dab paint over your collage, covering the letters completely. Let dry.
Step 5: After the paint has completely dried, carefully peel the letters off of the canvas.
That’s it! Now display your collage momento for friends, family, and guests to see in order to continue the conversation year round!
Loving Day is celebrated every year around June 12th. This year we celebrate 48 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision. Mixed Roots Stories wants to celebrate with YOU!
We are seeking visual submissions that commemorate and celebrate the history of the Lovings and show a vision of what we have learned from the Loving’s that can help us move towards justice today!
It is time to get creative! Draw, paint, collage, record, build….
Craft with New Friends. Have a gathering at your house with people you have been wanting to get to know better. The new neighbors. The person at work. Tell them the Loving Story and create a group collage or painting. Check out this Mixed Media Loving Day collage activity that the Mixed Roots Team did.
Explore Expression with Technology. Create a short video, animation. Get creative digitally.
Send your Visualizing Loving Day submissions to info@mixedrootsstories.org. We need the name of the artist, the medium (i.e. ink drawing, water painting), the title of the piece, and any bio information of the artist you would like us to include. You can submit in the following formats: JPEG, TIFF, GIF, .mov, link, etc .
We will post your Visualizing Loving Day submissions to our gallery in the month of June!
