Mildred and Richard Loving (1965 file photo)

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge of a ban on interracial marriage in the southeastern state of Virginia led to a landmark victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, has died at the age of 68.

Her daughter says Loving died last week at her home in central Virginia.

Mildred Loving and her white husband Richard, married in Washington, D.C. in 1958.  They were arrested a few weeks later in their Virginia home and agreed to leave the state for 25 years.

After living in Washington for several years, the couple wrote then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in 1964 for help.  Kennedy referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU.

The group took the case all the way to high court, which overturned the Virginia law by a unanimous decision in 1967.  The ruling also overturned similar laws in more than a dozen other states.

They returned to central Virginia after the Supreme Court decision.  Richard Loving was killed in an automobile accident in 1975. 

Some information for this report was provided by AP.