Racial Integrity Act of 1924

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In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act.^[1] The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as "white" a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian".^[2] The act, an outgrowth of eugenicist and scientific racist propaganda, was pushed by Walter Plecker, a white supremacist and eugenicist who held the post of registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics.^[3]

The Racial Integrity Act required that all birth certificates and marriage certificates in Virginia to include the person's race as either "white" or "colored". The Act classified all non-whites, including Native Americans, as "colored".^[2] The act was part of a series of "racial integrity laws" enacted in Virginia to reinforce racial hierarchies and prohibit the mixing of races; other statutes included the Public Assemblages Act of 1926 (which required the racial segregation of all public meeting areas) and a 1930 act that defined any person with even a trace of sub-Saharan African ancestry as black (thus codifying the so-called "one-drop rule").^[2]

In 1967, both the Racial Integrity Act and the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 were officially overturned by the United States Supreme Court in their ruling Loving v. Virginia. In 2001, the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution that condemned the Racial Integrity Act for its "use as a respectable, 'scientific' veneer to cover the activities of those who held blatantly racist views".^[2]