APPENDIX III THE NEW VIRGINIA RACE INTEGRITY LAW The Virginia "Act to PRESERVE RACIAL INTEGRITY" (1924) is the most perfected legal expression of the white ideal. Not since the institution of caste by the white conquerors of Ancient India has there been an attempt so drastic to stay the forces which lead to the mongrelization of the white race when in contact with colored races. SECTION 1. (Provides for a registration certificate whereon the racial composition of the individual is recorded. If the individual is not white the degree of admixture and the racial source of the non-white blood is set forth, "in so far as ascertainable.") SECTION 2. It shall be a felony for any person wilfully or knowingly to make a registration certificate false as to color or race. The wilful making of a false registration or birth certificate shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for one year. SECTION 4. No marriage license shall be granted until the clerk or deputy clerk has reasonable assurance that the statements as to color of both man and woman are correct. If there is reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk or deputy clerk shall withhold the granting of the license until satisfactory proof is produced that both applicants are “white persons" as provided for in this act. The clerk or deputy clerk shall use the same care to assure himself that both applicants are colored, when that fact is claimed. SECTION 5. It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act. Sections 3 and 6 outline technical procedures. Section 7 repeals all acts or parts of acts now existing which are not consistent with the new law. The old law defined a white person as a person of fifteensixteenths or more of white blood if the admixture was between whites and Negroes. The need for a re-defining of "white person" was fully established in an address before the House of Delegates by an eminent Virginian, Mr. John Powell, and by official data from the records of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, given by W. A. Plecker, M. D., State Registrar. It should be observed that none of the states have fully effective laws against miscegenation and that nineteen states do not have a law forbidding marriage between white and colored. If we are to remain a white people the states which have prohibitory laws should perfect them and the states which do not have such laws should enact them. Marriage between white and colored is permitted in Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. See "American Marriage Laws," The Russell Sage Foundation, 1919. It is difficult to believe that the white people in these nineteen states do not hold the same high ideals that the rest of the states have expressed, with regard to maintaining the integrity of the white race. It is almost certain that any well directed attempt to secure anti-miscegenation laws in these states would meet with success. INDEX Africa, large proportion of inhabitants mixbreeds, 68. Asiatics of Western States, high birth rate of, 357. Australia, "White Australia" policy of, 373. Calderon, F. Garcia, negro blood causing Latin America to return to Caucasian Race, three well marked divisions of, 42. China, early whites on confines of, 156. Clay, Henry, president of American Colonization Society, 341. Early America, did early whites reach the New World, 163. Negroes in army of, 98, 101. Esarhaddon, defeats the mulatto Pharaoh and conquers Egypt, 123. Hamites, branch of Mediterranean race, 63. India, early white civilization of, 134; caste failed to preserve white inhabitants of, 136, 139. Isaiah, prophesies the defeat of the mulatto Pharaoh, 83. Japan, early whites colonized, 37. Jefferson, Thomas, Negroes and whites cannot live in the same govern- Keane, A. H., deadly results of miscegenation in Latin America, 320. Latin America, nine-tenths colored, 182. Liberia, founded by white Americans, 343; will support twenty million inhabitants, 343; affords splendid naval base, 345. Lincoln, Abraham, men of his belief the most far-seeing men of their plan for colonizing American negroes, 324. [397] |