Racial Integrity Act of 1924

The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was a Virginia law that banned interracial marriage, set strict legal definitions of race and made it a crime to give false racial information on legal documents.

What the law said

The act defined a "white person" as someone with "no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian." Everyone else was classified as "colored." In 1930 the General Assembly amended the law so that a "colored" person meant anyone with "one drop" of "negro blood."

Walter Plecker

Walter Plecker, a physician and eugenicist, ran Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912 to 1946. He pushed for the act and used the state's birth certificate system to enforce it. He also issued lists of surnames he associated with "free negroes" to help officials classify people as "colored."

Effect on Virginia Indians

Birth certificates from before 1924 that recorded a person as "Indian" were overwritten as "colored." The result was a mass erasure of Virginia Indian identity on paper. It also made it hard for Virginia Indian communities to document unbroken lineage, which federal recognition requires. Seven Virginia tribes are federally recognized today.

Effect on Black Virginians

Black Virginians were classified as "colored" under the act, and Plecker's surname lists were used to place people in that category.

Loving v. Virginia

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the ban on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. Richard Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who had African American and Native American ancestry, had been convicted after marrying in Washington, DC, and returning to Virginia. The ruling reversed their convictions and invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in 15 other states.

References

1. Racial Integrity Act, National Park Service.
2. Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Wikipedia (see its cited sources).