Authors: Edwin Black
Although he cloaked his crusade under the mantle of eugenic science, Plecker did not mind confessing his real motive to Laughlin. “While we are interested in the eugenical records of our citizens,” Plecker wrote the ERO, “we are attempting to list only the mixed breeds who are endeavoring to pass into the white race.”
18
In other words, Plecker could not be distracted with complex formulas and eugenic charts tracing a spectrum of racial and subraciallineages. In Virginia, you were either ancestrally white or you weren’t.
Plecker introduced new techniques in registering births and deaths. In July of 1921, for instance, the Bureau of Vital Statistics mailed a special warning to each of Virginia’s 2,500 undertakers. Plecker reminded them that under the law, death certificates could not simply be mailed, but must be delivered in person for verity’s sake. Nor could a body be removed or buried without a proper burial permit. An extra permit was needed to ship a body. Moreover, Plecker demanded that coffin dealers provide monthly reports of “all sales of which there is any doubt, giving the address of purchaser, or head of the family, and name of deceased with place and date.”
19
Under Plecker’s rule, no one was permitted to die in Virginia without leaving a long racial paper trail.
Plecker would enforce similar regimens with midwives and obstetricians, town clerks and church clerics-anyone who could attest to the racial makeup of those who lived and died in Virginia. Over the next several years, he created a cross-indexed system that recorded more than a million Virginia births and deaths since 1912. He also catalogued thousands of annual marriages, each filed under both husband’s and wife’s name. The data quickly became too voluminous for index cards. Plecker created a complicated but unique system to store the massive troves of information. Clerks would type all the names “on to sheets of the best linen paper, using unfading carbon ribbons,” Plecker once explained in a flourish of brag-gadocio, adding, “We make these in triplicate and bind them in books. These [names] can be quickly referred to as easily as you can find a word in the dictionary.” Eventually, Plecker hoped to secure state funding to reconstruct as many records as possible going back to 1630 and then “indexing these by our system. “
20
Plecker planned to add the names of all epileptics, insane, feebleminded and criminals, which would be gathered from the state’s hospitals, prisons, city bureaus and county clerks, bestowing on Virginia a massive eugenical database that would reach back to the first white footfalls on Virginia soil. “The purpose will be to list degenerates and criminals,” he assured.
21
Of course the ERO was also assembling hundreds of thousands of names, but its extensive rolls only amounted to a patchwork of lineages from counties speckled around the country. Plecker’s vision would deliver America’s first statewide eugenic registry-a real one.
It is important to understand that while carrying the banner of eugenics, Plecker’s true passion never varied.
It
was always about preserving the purity of the white race. Millions of inscribed linen pages and thousands of leather-bound volumes could be filled, but Plecker would never achieve his real goal without dramatic legislative changes. Existing state laws outlawing mixed-race marriages, including Virginia’s, were simply too permissive. In the first place, most states varied on what exactly constituted a Negro or colored person. At least six states forbade whites from marrying half-Negroes or mulattoes. Nearly a dozen states prohibited whites from marrying those of one-quarter or even one-eighth Negro ancestry. Others were simply vague. Virginia’s own blurred statutes had allowed extensive intermarriage through the generations: between whites and light-skinned Negroes, White-Indian-Negro triracials, mulattoes, and others. Plecker and the ERO called this process the “mongrelization” of Virginia’s white race.
22
To halt mongrelization, a coalition of Virginia’s most powerful whites organized a campaign to create the nation’s stiffest marriage restriction law. It would ban marriage between a certified white person and anyone with even “one drop” of non-Caucasian blood. The key would be mandatory statewide registration of all persons, under Plecker’s purview as registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. Leading the charge for the new legislation were Plecker and two friends, the musician John Powell and the journalist Earnest S. Cox.
23
Powell was one of Virginia’s most esteemed composers and concert pianists. Ironically, he built his musical reputation on performing his
Rhapsodie Negre,
which wove Negro themes and spirituals into a popular sonata form. Later, as Powell became more race conscious, he claimed that Negroes had stolen their music from the “compositions of white men.” Powell decried the American melting pot as a “witch’s cauldron.”
24
Cox led the White America Society, and authored the popular racist tome,
White America
(1923), which warned of the mongrelization of the nation. “[The] real problems when dealing with colored races,” trumpeted Cox, “[is] the sub-normal whites who transgress the color line in practice and the super-normal whites who [only] oppose the color line in theory.”
Eugenical News
effusively reviewed Cox’s book, stating, “America is still worth saving for the white race and it can be done. If Mr. E. S. Cox can bring it about, he will be a greater savior of his country than George Washington. We wish him, his book and his ‘White America Society’ god-speed.” Plecker, Cox and Powell created a small but potent white supremacist league known as the Anglo-Saxon Clubs, which would become pivotal in the registration crusade
25
Despite their virulent racism, the Anglo-Saxon Clubs claimed they harbored no ill will toward Negroes. Why? Because now it was just science-eugenic science. The Anglo-Saxon Clubs could boast, “‘One drop of negro blood makes the negro’ is no longer a theory based on race pride or color prejudice, but a logically induced, scientific fact.” As such, even the group’s constitution proclaimed its desire “for the supremacy of the white race in the United States of America, without racial prejudice or hatred.”
26
This was the powerful redefining nature of eugenics-in action.
The Anglo-Saxon Clubs and their loose confederation oflocal branches successfully petitioned the Virginia General Assembly and quickly brought about Senate Bill #219 and House Bill #311, each captioned “An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity.” The legislation would require all Virginians to register their race and defined whites as those with “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian.” As one Norfolk editorialist described the proposal, “Each person, not already booked in the Vital Statistics Bureau will be required to take out a sort of passport correctly setting forth his racial composition…. “ This passport or certificate would be required before any marriage license could be granted. Pure whites could only marry pure whites. All other race combinations would be allowed to inter-marry freely.
27
The Anglo-Saxon Clubs found a powerful ally in their campaign. The state’s leading newspaper, the
Richmond Times-Dispatch,
allowed its pages to become a megaphone for the legislation. In July of 1923, for example, Cox and Powell published side-by-side articles entitled “Is White America to Become a Negroid Nation?” The men claimed their proposed legislation was based on sound Mendelian eugenics that now conclusively proved that when two human varieties mixed, “the more primitive … always dominates in the hybrid offspring.” The
Richmond Times-Dispatch
supported the idea in an editorial.
28
On February 12, 1924, Powell enthralled a packed Virginia House of Delegates with his call to stop Negro blood from further mongrelizing the state’s white population. “POWELL ASKS LAW GUARDING RACIAL PURITY” proclaimed the
Richmond Times-Dispatch’s
page one headline. Subheads read “Rigid Registration System is Needed” and “Bill Would Cut Shon Marriage of Whites with Non-Whites.” The newspaper’s lead paragraph called the address “historic.” Leaving little to doubt, the article made clear that a “rigid system of registration” would halt the race mixing and mongrelization arising from centuries of procreation by whites with Negro slaves and their descendants. Such preeminent eugenic raceologists as Madison Grant were quoted extensively to reaffirm the scientific necessity underpinning the legislative effort. Lothrop Stoddard, a member of Margaret Sanger’s board of advisors, was also quoted, declaring, “I consider such legislation … to be of the highest value and greatest necessity in order that the purity of the white race be safeguarded from possibility of contamination with nonwhite blood. … This is a matter of both national and racial life and death.”
29
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 REGISTRAR
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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 REGISTRAR
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