Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Mildred Loving-the living woman who challenged the law

Mildred Loving, a black woman married a White man in 1958 in Washington DC. When they went home to Virginia where they have lived since they were kids, they were arrested. There was a ban of interracial marriages so that the marriage was deemed null and void and therefore they were being arrested for cohabiting as man and wife.

Her husband preferred to leave Virginia rather than divorce or leave Mildred. They left Virginia together to avoid jail time and settled in Washington DC.

Mildred changed history by challenging the law. She decided to fight for their right. She wrote Robert F. Kennedy who referred the case to the ACLU. In 1967, the Supreme Court lifted the interracial marriage ban nationwide.

Her husband died in 1975 due to car accident. Mildred Loving died last May 4, 2008 to join her husband where race is not a matter of discrimination for loving couples.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

When Jessop was a member of the sect, it was centered in Colorado City, Ariz., on the Utah border. The 1,700-acre Texas compound was built after she left. The sect’s leader, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last September after being found guilty of two counts of first-degree accomplice rape for sanctioning the forced marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin.

The 40-year-old Jessop was 18 when she was forced to marry Merril Jessop, who is said to have taken over leadership of the sect when Jeffs went to prison. Merril Jessop was 50 at the time of the marriage and had three other wives. She said from what she has heard and read, the sect has become even more restrictive since moving to Texas.

She has written a book about her experience entitled “Escape,” and in it, she talks about being totally cut off from the world and not being allowed to watch television or read newspapers or magazines.

“Everything you did was monitored and controlled and everybody reported on everyone else,” she said. “It was a police state. You were not allowed to make decisions in your life. I had no power over my life or the lives of my children. It was a terrible way to live.”

The alleged control began in infancy.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Julie Andrews and her Early Life

julie- andrews
Julie Andrews is one of my favorite movie celebrities ever since I saw her in Sound of Music. I like her beautiful voice too which she lost due to operation.

At age 72 and married for 38 years with equally famous director of Pink Panther Series, Breakfast at Tiffany's and other movies, blake Edwards, she found the time to write her life story or ealier years.

She started her show business career at age nine with her pianist mother who was in the vaudeville act. Her name was Julia Elizabeth Wells, the last name , he got from her stepfather who she thought was her real father.

Her father was Ted Andrews who was also a singer-guitarist from Canada.
Both her biological parents became alcoholic.

The title of her autobiography is Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.”