Racial Integrity Act (1924)

A widely known and enforced ban against racial intermarriage, the Racial Integrity Act was a Virginia law passed in 1924, which required that the race of all persons born in the state be recorded at birth and registered on marriage certificates. Most infamously, the law made marriage between “white persons” and nonwhites a felony offense. The Racial Integrity Act was passed at the same time as another important law, the Sterilization Act, which provided for the sterilization of individuals who were classified as “feeble-minded.” Inspired by the EUGENICS movement, these laws were designed to keep the population racially pure and to restrict the childbearing of the “unfit.” The Racial Integrity Act further acted in tandem with state laws of SEGREGATION, providing for the biological separation of one race from another.

The early 20th century witnessed the rise of eugenics as a supposed SCIENCE of human reproduction and heredity. Inspired by the work of Francis Galton, the goal of the eugenics movement was social engineering—to eliminate the hereditary weaknesses that supposedly led to lower intelligence, criminality, and poverty through selective reproduction. The popularity of eugenic ideas in the United States led to several state laws that prescribed sterilization for the feebleminded and/or banned interracial marriage. Virginia’s was not the first such law. By 1924, 15 states had similar legislation. The Racial Integrity Act, however, became the most strongly enforced law in the nation.

Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, the Virginia registrar of vital statistics, played a central role in developing the racial criteria of the Act. The law required that any individual with even one drop of nonwhite blood be legally registered as

Further reading: Edwin Black, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003); Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity (New York: Random House, 2006); Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).