Title: Instructions on
Preserving Racial Integrity
Source: University of Virginia Special
Collections
More informationThe Racial Integrity Laws, which included the
Racial Integrity Act (RIA) of 1924, were a series of legislative efforts designed to
protect "whiteness" against what many Virginians perceived to be the effects of
immigration and race-mixing. Passed in the context of a national surge in nativism,
racism, and sexism, these laws explicitly defined how people should be classified—for
example, as white, black, or Indian—and then, through Virginia's newly created Bureau
of Vital Statistics under the direction of Dr. Walter Plecker, aggressively policed the
distinctions. Elite white Virginians, often belonging to the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of
America (ASCOA), worried that their efforts on behalf of white supremacy might be confused with the more
violent work of the Ku Klux Klan. As a
result, they used the RIA to recast racial bigotry as progressive, scientific social policy. There
was some social and political backlash against the laws, but not enough to overturn
them until the U.S. Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in
Loving v. Virginia, which declared Virginia's ban on interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
Most of Virginia's Indians, meanwhile, had been classified by the RIA as racially
black, a designation that continues to be an obstacle for federal tribal
recognition.
Title: With Good
Reason: "The Racial
Integrity Act of 1924"
Source: VFH Radio
More informationWhite Virginians had long been
concerned with policing the color line. Virginia outlawed interracial marriage in
1691. In 1705 the colony defined a "mulatto" as "the child of an Indian and the
child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro," and in 1785 the commonwealth
clarified that definition to apply to "every person who shall have one-fourth part or
more of negro blood." After the American
Civil War (1861–1865), a new statute defined a "colored person" as anyone
having one-fourth or more of "negro blood" and an Indian as any person having
one-fourth or more of Indian blood. In the first years of the twentieth century, with
the emergence of scientific racism (the use of purportedly scientific methods to
justify racial differences and hierarchies) and its attendant policies of segregation and disfranchisement, white
Virginians sought to tighten racial definitions. In 1910, the Virginia General
Assembly declared that anyone with one-sixteenth or more "black blood" was black. All
other people were legally white.
Title: Dr. Walter Ashby
Plecker
Source: the Richmond
Times-Dispatch
More informationSuch quasi-scientific, genealogical
measurements characterized many states' efforts to define race, but the Virginia
General Assembly also enlisted the power of the state to enforce such racial
categories. In 1912, the General Assembly created the Bureau of Vital Statistics to
register all births, deaths, and marriages in the state, and all birth certificates
had to state the race of the parents. Under the direction of Dr. Walter Plecker, the
Bureau of Vital Statistics became an active agent in policing the color line. By the
early 1920s, many white Virginians, including Plecker, believed the 1910 law had
failed to defend their prerogatives.
Disdaining the Ku Klux Klan's violent white supremacist policies and tactics, elite white Virginians embraced the scientific racism espoused by the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America. Founded in Richmond in September 1922 by internationally renowned pianist John Powell, self-styled ethnologist Earnest Sevier Cox, and Plecker, the ASCOA committed itself to preserving white "racial purity." Powell provided the movement's star power and publicity; Cox's book White America (1923) provided the pseudoscientific, eugenic justifications; and Plecker backed the other two with the state's police power. The ASCOA demanded legislation prohibiting interracial marriage and defining anyone with any non-white heritage—even one drop—as black.
Title: John Powell
Source: Library of Congress
More informationThe ASCOA's rhetoric decrying race-mixing
angered powerful Virginia families that claimed descent from Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Thus, the ASCOA's racial integrity bill was
amended to allow the marriage of whites with anyone having less than one-sixteenth
Native American blood—a fraction of "Indian" heritage that preserved these families'
whiteness. This became known as the "Pocahontas clause." Legislators passed the
amended RIA to wide acclaim and Plecker began zealously enforcing the act.
Plecker believed that Virginia's Indians had thoroughly interbred with African Americans, rendering all "modern" Indians—especially those in Amherst and Rockbridge counties—black. Plecker instructed local registrars to affix a warning label to the birth certificates of people claiming Indian heritage; the label stated that the person was "colored" and provided genealogical information. Plecker also ordered registrars to refuse marriage licenses to anyone with any trace of non-white blood attempting to marry a white person. He personally threatened anyone who questioned the system. Plecker's actions prompted lawsuits from people contesting their racial classification and demanding the right to marry.
The first two lawsuits challenging the RIA resulted in opposite decisions, drawing the law's constitutionality into question. The first case upheld the RIA. In the second case, however, the same judge ruled that since there was no discernable trace of non-white blood in either party, the couple should be allowed to marry.
Rather than appeal the ruling, and risk having the RIA declared unconstitutional, the ASCOA sought to tighten the law's racial classifications. Attempted revisions failed in 1926 and 1928, although a law mandating racial segregation at all public assemblages passed in 1926 with ASCOA support. Many whites believed that these measures, combined with Plecker's rigorous policing, unnecessarily inflamed racial tensions. Nevertheless, a threat to segregated public schooling precipitated further legislation.
Title: Help for Midwives
Source: University of Virginia Special
Collections
More informationSince the RIA did not amend the 1910 act
defining people with more than one-sixteenth black "blood" as black, individuals with
less than one-sixteenth black blood slipped through a legal loophole. According to
the RIA, these people were not white enough to marry white people; yet according to
the 1910 law they were not black. Therefore, by law, these "colored" people had to
attend white schools.
To defend white privilege, the General Assembly passed another racial integrity law in 1930. Under this statute, people with one-quarter Indian blood and less than one-sixteenth black blood were classified as Indians—but only if they lived on a reservation, segregated from whites. Anyone else with even "one drop" of non-white blood was henceforth black—unless exempted by the RIA's "Pocahontas clause." This meant that the Indians of Amherst and Rockbridge counties became black by law.
Virginia's RIA remained in force until the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia (1967). Virginia's Monacan Indians have continued to battle their 1924 legislative reclassification as non-Indian, seeking tribal recognition from the federal government.
First published: February 17, 2009 | Last modified: April 7, 2011
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