Tis better to have Loving and lost, than never to have had Loving at all

She didn't set out to change the country. She wasn't looking to become a standard bearer for civil rights. She just wanted to get married.

But it took an act of the United States Supreme Court for Mildred Loving to realize this simple ambition. Because she was black, her fiance was white, they lived in Virginia, and the year was 1958.

Mildred Loving died today. If, in her passing, we are must suffer the loss of another civil rights icon (a role she herself was very uncomfortable with), we at least have as consolation a legacy that lifts and ennobles all Americans.