In conjunction with SB 281, labelled “The Sterilization Act”, “Racial Integrity Act” would provide the legal framework for a systematic oppression of minorities and the disabled via eugenic practices, all in the name of preserving ‘whiteness’.
Governor E. Lee Trinkle signs "An act to Preserve Racial Integrity," a law aimed at protecting whiteness on the state level. It prohibits interracial marriage, defines a white person as someone who has no discernible non-white ancestry, and requires that birth and marriage certificates indicate people's races.
In a letter to the Richmond News Leader, Gordon Blaine Hancock, a professor at Virginia Union University, opposes the proposed Racial Integrity Act. The Senate of Virginia passes an amended Racial Integrity Act. The House of Delegates passes an amended Racial Integrity Act.
In 1923, the Anglo-Saxon Clubs suggested that a new racial integrity bill be enacted, and the group’s motivation, in part, was for the law to catch up with how government officials such as Plecker were already behaving with regard to race.
Until the late 1960s, Virginia and many other states had laws that forbade interracial marriage. Virginia's law was known as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
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311 on February 15. In its original form, it required that all Virginians fill out a certificate of racial composition to be approved by the Bureau of Vital Statistics . This certificate would be necessary in order to marry in Virginia, and it would be against the law for a white person to marry anyone but a white person. Although interracial marriage had been banned previously in Virginia, this was the first time that marriage between whites and Asians—or other people who were legally neither “colored” nor white—was prohibited.
The Racial Integrity Act remained on the books until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, found its prohibition of interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
Racial integrity laws were passed by the General Assembly to protect “whiteness” against what many Virginians perceived to be the negative effects of race-mixing. They included the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited interracial marriage and defined as white a person “who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian”; the Public Assemblages Act of 1926, which required all public meeting spaces to be strictly segregated; and a third act, passed in 1930, that defined as black a person who has even a trace of African American ancestry. This way of defining whiteness as a kind of purity in bloodline became known as the “one drop rule.” These laws arrived at a time when a pseudo-science of white superiority called eugenics gained support by groups like the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, which argued that the mixing of whites, African Americans, and Virginia Indians could cause great societal harm, despite the fact that the races had been intermixed since European settlement. From his position as the state registrar of vital statistics, Walter A. Plecker micromanaged the racial classifications of Virginians, often worrying that blacks were attempting to pass as white. Virginia Indians were particularly incensed by the laws, and by Plecker in particular, because the state seemed intent on removing any legal recognition of Indian identity in favor of the broader category “colored.” After one failed try, lawmakers largely achieved this goal in 1930, drawing negative reaction from the black press. The Racial Integrity Act remained on the books until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, found its prohibition of interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. In 2001, the General Assembly denounced the act, and eugenics, as racist.
In 1705, the General Assembly articulated specific racial groups and restricted the rights of African Americans, Indians, and mulattoes, defining the latter as anyone who was the child of an Indian or the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of an African American.
In 1928, the General Assembly attempted to fix a problem with its racial definitions. According to the law, a “colored” person was someone with one-sixteenth or more “negro blood,” while a white person had no trace of non-white blood. So how should the law define someone who was part African American, but less than one-sixteenth?
The decision effectively overturns the bans on interracial marriage in sixteen states. March 25, 1983. Virginia Joint Resolution 54 extends official state recognition to the Chickahominy tribe, the Eastern Chickahominy tribe, the United Rappahannock tribe, and the Upper Mattaponi tribe.
February 21, 1924. The House of Delegates rejects the Racial Integrity Act. February 23, 1924. In a letter to the Richmond News Leader, Gordon Blaine Hancock, a professor at Virginia Union University, opposes the proposed Racial Integrity Act.