by Edwin Black
Virginia’s legislature, in Richmond, was soon scheduled to debate what was now dubbed the “Racial Integrity Act.” It was the same 1924 session of the legislature that had enacted the law for mandatory sterilization of mental defectives that was successfully applied to Carrie Buck. On February 18, 1924, with the forthcoming debate in mind, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published a rousing editorial page endorsement that legislators were sure to read. Employing eugenic catchphrases, the newspaper reminded readers that when “amalgamation” between races occurred, “one race will absorb the other. And history shows that the more highly developed strain always is the one to go. America is headed toward mongrelism; only… measures to retain racial integrity can stop the country from becoming negroid in population…. Thousands of men and women who pass for white persons in this state have in their veins negro blood… it will sound the death knell of the white man. Once a drop of inferior blood gets in his veins, he descends lower and lower in the mongrel scale.”30
Despite the bill’s popular appeal, legislators were unwilling to ratify the measure without two adjusonents. First, the notion of mandatory registration was considered an “insult to the white people of the state,” as one irritated senator phrased it. Plecker confided to a minister, “The legislature was about to vote the whole measure down when we offered it making registration optional.” Mandatory registration was deleted from the bill. Second, a racial loophole was permitted (over Plecker’s objection), this to accommodate the oldest and most revered Virginia families who proudly boasted of descending from pre-Colonial Indians, including Pocahontas. Plecker’s original proposal only allowed those with one-sixty-fourth Indian blood or less to be registered as white. This was broadened by the senators to one-sixteenth Indian blood, with the understanding that many of Virginia’s finest lineages included eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian ancestors.31
Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act was ratified on March 8, 1924, and became effective on June 15. Falsely registering one’s race was defined as a felony, punishable by a year in prison.32
As soon as the law was enacted, Plecker began circulating special bulletins. The first went out in March of 1924, even before the effective date of the law. Under the insignia of the Virginia Department of Health, a special “Health Bulletin,” labeled “Extra #1” and entitled “To Preserve Racial Integrity,” laid out strict instructions to all local registrars and other government officials throughout the state. “As color is the most important feature of this form of registration,” the instructions read, “the local registrar must be sure that there is no trace of colored blood in anyone offering to register as a white person. The penalty for willfully making a false claim as to color is one year in the penitentiary…. The Clerk must also decide the question of color before he can issue a marriage license…. You should warn any person of mixed or doubtful color as to the risk of making a claim as to his color, if it is afterwards found to be false.” Health Bulletin Extra #1 defined various levels of white-Negro mixtures, such as mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, colored and mixed. Along with the bulletin, Plecker distributed the first 65,000 copies of State Form 59, printed on March 17, “Registration of Birth and Color-Virginia.”33
Health Bulletin #2 was mailed several days later and warned, “It is estimated that there are in the state from 10,000 to 20,000, possibly more, near white people, who are known to possess an intermixture of colored blood, in some cases to a slight extent, it is true, but still enough to prevent them from being white. In the past, it has been possible for these people to declare themselves as white…. Then they have demanded the admittance of their children into the white schools, and in not a few cases have inter-married with white people…. Our Bureau has kept a watchful eye upon the situation.” Bulletin #2 reminded everyone that a year of jail time awaited anyone who violated the act.34
Plecker quickly began using his office, letterhead and the public’s uncertainty about the implications of the new law to his advantage. His letters and bulletins informed and sometimes hounded new parents, newlyweds, midwives, physicians, funeral directors, ministers, and anyone else the Bureau of Vital Statistics suspected of being or abetting the unwhite.35
April 30, 1924
Mrs. Robert H. Cheatham
Lynchburg, Virginia
We have a report of the birth of your child,July 30th, 1923, signed by Mary Gildon, midwife. She says that you are white and that the father of the child is white. We have a correction to this certificate sent to us from the City Health Department at Lynchburg, in which they say that the father of this child is a negro. This is to give you warning that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. A new law passed by the last legislature says that if a child has one drop of negro blood in it, it cannot be counted as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.
It is an awful thing.
Yours very truly,
WA. Plecker
STATE REGISTRAR36
Plecker followed this with a short note to the midwife, Mary Gildon.
This is to notify you that it is a penitentiary offense to willfully state that a child is white when it is colored. You have made yourselfliable to very serious trouble by doing this thing. What have you got to say about it?
Yours very truly,
WA. Plecker
STATE REGISTRAR37
Plecker’s friend Powell of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs was copied on both letters. A small handwritten notation at the top left read, “Dear Mr. Powell: This is a specimen of our daily troubles and how we are handling them.”38
Plecker acted on rumor, consulted arcane tax and real estate documents, and of course whatever records were available from various eugenic sources. On July 29, 1924, Plecker wrote to W H. Clark, who lived at Irish Creek in Rockbridge County. “I do not know you personally and have no positive assurance as to your racial standing, but I do know that an investigation made some time ago by the Carnegie Foundation of the people of mixed descent in Amherst County found the Clark family one of those known to be thus mixed. We learned also that members of this family and of other mixed families have crossed over from Amherst County and are now living on Irish Creek.” After informing Clark that his ancestors included “three Indians who mixed with white and negro people,” Plecker asserted that the man was now one of five hundred individuals who would be removed from the list of white people.39
Adding a threat of prosecution, Plecker warned, “We do not expect to be easy upon anyone who makes a misstatement and we expect soon to be in possession of facts which we can take into court if necessary.” Plecker seemed to enjoy taunting the racially suspect. He sardonically added that he looked forward to tarring even more of Clark’s extended family. “I will be glad to hear what you have to say,” quipped Plecker, “and particularly to have the dates and places of the births and marriages of yourself, your parents and grandparents.”40
Plecker was equally ruthless with his own registrars. One was Pal S. Beverly, a registrar in Pera, Virginia. Beverly had bitterly complained that registration of his own family as white had been overruled by Plecker. Records unearthed by Plecker showed Beverly to be a so-called “Free Issue” Negro, that is, a class of freed slave. “Because of your constant agitation,” Plecker wrote him on October 12, 1929, “of the question that you are a white man and not a member of the ‘Free Issue’ group of Amherst, as you and your ancestors have been rated, we wrote to you recently asking for the names of your father and of his father and your grandfather’s mother.”41
Plecker had probed Beverly’s family tree for generations. The registrar laid it out for him in stunning and damning detail. “The certificate of death of your mother Leeanna (or Leander) Francis Beverly, Nov. 5,1923, states that she was the wife of Adolphus Beverly,” informed Plecker. “This certificate was signed by you when you were our local registrar.” Ple
cker then checked Adolphus Beverly’s 1881 marriage license and discovered that Beverly’s father was listed as colored. Plecker then investigated Adolphus Beverly’s father, Frederick. In the Personal Property Tax Book for the years 1846 through 1851, Frederick was listed as a freed slave. Frederick was born in 1805 and was recorded in the census along with his older brother, Samuel-and on and on.42
“I am notifying you finally,” Plecker informed Beverly, “that you can have no other rating in our office under the Act of 1924 than that of a mulatto or colored man, regardless of your personal appearance, voting list, or statements which any persons may make to petitions in your behalf…. I want to notify you further that any effort that you make to register yourself or your family in our office as white is, under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, a felony making you liable to a penalty of one year in the penitentiary.” For extra measure, he added that the bureau had identified numerous other mixed-race individuals in the county named Beverly.43
As promised, Plecker began decertifying the extended family members of Pal Beverly. Among them was Mascott Hamilton of Glasgow, in Rockbridge County, Virginia. After Plecker’s ruling, Hamilton’s children were thrown out of the white school they attended. “When Hamilton threatened to sue, Plecker gleefully replied, “I am glad to learn from you the fact that your children are kept out of the white schools…. “ He presented the point-by-point documentation: “You and your wife belong to the group of people known as ‘free issues’ who are classed in Amherst County where they started as of free Negro stock, the name they were called by before the War Between the States to distinguish them from slave Negroes…. Your wife’s mother married Price Beverly, a grandson of Frederick Beverly, who was a son of Bettie Buck or (Beverly) who was a slave and set free and sent to Amherst by her owner Peter Rose of Buckingham County, together with her sons Frederick and Samuel. Your wife’s grandmother, Aurora Wood married Richard, a son of the freed negro, Frederick Beverly.”44
The litany continued. “The children which you refer to were probably your wife’s by her divorced husband Sam Roberts, who is shown to be an illegitimate son of Jennie Roberts. You did not marry Dora till 192 5. The Roberts family is also of true ‘free issue’ stock. Your wife gave birth to one child two months after she was married to Sam Roberts. Does she say that the father was a white man and not her husband? “What a mess-trying to be white!!”45
Plecker scoffed, “Your wife’s history shows a complete line of illegitimacy and she claims this as the ground upon which she hopes to be classified as white. It would be difficult to find a white family except of feebleminded people in the state with such a record.” Ending with his standard threat, Plecker warned, “It is a penitentiary offense to try to register as white a child with any ascertainable trace of negro blood, and that when you go into court you will have this charge to face.”46
Similarly denigrating correspondence was mailed across the state. In May of 1930, Plecker notified the wife of Frank C. Clark, of rural Alleghany County, that her protestations of a white appearance and years of living as white were meaningless. “The question of whether or not there is any trace of negro blood present is determined by the record of ancestors and not by the appearance of an individual at the present day after securing crossings of white blood. Neither does the securing of marriage licenses, and registering children falsely as white establish the racial origin.” Her father-in-Iaw’s colored marriage license, and the state’s pre-Civil War tax records, “establishes the colored ancestry of your husband Frank C. Clark.”47
Plecker then enumerated the genealogical details of Mrs. Clark’s mother, Elena, her grandmother, Ella, and even her great-great-grandmother, Creasy, “who was said to have been ‘a little brown-skinned Negro who lived to be nearly one hundred years old.’” In closing, Plecker admonished, “All descendants of the people referred to above are colored and will be so considered in our office. They cannot legally marry into the white race nor attend white schools. Anyone who registers the births of descendants of the above as white… makes himself or herself liable to one year in the penitentiary.”48
In one case, four mulattoes from one family married white spouses, two in Washington, D.C., one in a distant Virginia town, and one in an undetermined location. When they returned to their hometown, Plecker tracked them all down and called the police. The couples “fled before the warrants issued for their arrest were served,” Plecker recounted to a friend.49
In another case, Plecker investigated a Grayson County couple married five years earlier. The couple had just given birth to a son. After a review of the birth certificate and other records, the man was found to be white, but Plecker determined his wife to be of Negro descent. Plecker essentially unmarried the couple. He ruled, “They were married illegally and under the laws of Virginia, they are not legally married. Both are liable to the State Penitentiary.” That ruling and any attendant information was forwarded to the Commonwealth Attorney for prosecution.50
Plecker’s relentless crusade continued for years. His typical workday began at 8:30 in the morning and ended at 5:00, and he usually put in a half-day on Saturdays. Two assistants, Miss Marks and Miss Kelly, helped him manage his constant correspondence as he probed for clues about individuals’ racial composition and then consummated his investigations with elaborate, combative missives.51
More than just prohibiting marriage and school admittance, he also tried to keep everyone but certified whites from riding in the white railroad coaches. He even pressured white cemeteries. When Riverview Cemetery in Charlottesville tried to bury someone of suspected Negro bloodline, Plecker protested, “This man is of negro ancestry…. To the white owner of a lot, it might prove embarrassing to meet with negroes visiting at one of their graves on the adjoining lot.”52
When he didn’t possess actual documentation, the registrar was more than willing to fake it. In 1940, fifteen citizens in Pittsylvania County had petitioned Plecker to bar the five children of the King Family from attending white school “on account of being of negroid mixture.” Plecker contacted the chairman of the Pittsylvania County school board seeking information on the five students admitting “we have no information in regard to them… [and] no way of proving facts from the record.” Plecker explained, “We are particularly desirous of knowing whether a negro man is the reputed father of these children, and if possible, his name.” Until that time, Plecker assured the school official, “We will preserve [the petitions of the fifteen people] in our files as evidence… and upon that information we will designate any of these children found in our records as colored-regardless.”53
In one episode, the Bedford County clerk, Mr. Nichols, contacted Plecker to confirm the racial status of a young man seeking to marry a white girl. The young man’s complexion was one of mixed parentage. Plecker wrote back, “We do not know whether we can establish his racial descent until we have had further information as to his family…. [But] if this young man has the appearance of being mulatto and cannot prove the contrary, I would suggest that no license be granted to him.” Two days later, the young couple went to the next county, Roanoke County, and successfully secured their marriage license. Plecker discovered it after the fact, haranguing the issuing clerk, “We have no positive information as to the man’s pedigree, we can only surmise it from Mr. Nichols’ observation as to his appearance. [But] shall this man… be turned loose upon the community to raise more mulatto children?”54
Plecker proselytized and chastised anyone who would listen. His Bureau of Vital Statistics regularly published radical racist and eugenic literature, which was distributed to thousands of doctors, ministers, teachers, morticians and racial integrity advocates. One series of official tracts, entitled the “New Family Series,” was aimed at youngsters to heighten their awareness of “dangers threatening the integrity and supremacy of the white race.” The bureau’s 1925 annual report to the governor was itself widely disseminated as a special health bulletin. In that report, Plecker lamented, �
��Not a few white women are giving birth to mulatto children. These women are usually feebleminded, but in some cases they are simply depraved. The segregation or sterilization of feebleminded females is the only solution to the problem.”55
The 1924 state publication, Eugenics and the New Family, insisted, “The variation in races is not simply a matter of color of skin, eyes, and hair and facial and bodily contour, but goes through every cell of the body. The mental and moral characteristics of a black man cannot even under the best environments and educational advantages become the same as those of a white man. But even if the negro’s attainments should be considerable, these could not be transmitted to his offspring since personally acquired qualities are not inheritable. Neither can the descendents of the union of the two races if left to their own resources, be expected to develop or maintain the highest type of civilization.”56
When Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act was passed in 1924, Plecker became an immediate hero among raceologists and eugenicists across America. He addressed major eugenic conferences and authored special articles on the topic for Eugenical News, the American Eugenics Society’s Eugenics, and various eugenic research anthologies. Laughlin was so impressed that he cited Plecker’s work in the 1929 edition of the American Year Book “for leadership in establishing new racial integrity laws in the American states.”57