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, the Act was 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 Act for its "use as a respectable, 'scientific' veneer to cover the activities of those who held blatantly racist views".^[2]