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Illustration for Washington Post Magazine (Nov 2022) yearly special issue, exploring the 14th Amendment and what could fall apart given the Dobbs Supreme Court case decision.
This issue focuses on different rights conferred by the Supreme Court under the 14th Amendment – this being right to have an interracial marriage (Loving v Virginia).
“Pictured here is Edward O’Brien and Estela Marquetti and the six children they raised in Long Island, New York. They first met in 1958 at a daily mass near John’s Hopkins University, bonding over a shared faith and sense of humor. He was from Australia. She was Black and Cuban. Their 61 year relationship began in Maryland almost a decade before the Supreme Court made interracial marriage legal nationwide.
They married about one year after meeting on December 26th of 1959. That day, the two drove out to Washington, DC, where interracial marriage was legal, and drove right back to Baltimore at night. Neither of their families could make it to the ceremony.
The ACLU reached out to Edward to ask if the couple would be willing to test the ban on interracial marriage. He declined. He was busy working on an engineering PhD, and worried that he if he did take on the case, he’d never actually be able to start the big family of their dreams.
In September of 1960 Estela gave birth to the first of six kids and my mom, Maria Consuelo. Her birth certificate listed Edward as a “negro.” Edward and Estela passed away in 2019 exactly forty days apart. They are survived by their six children and twenty-one grandchildren.” (full article)