1924
The Racial Integrity Act
The Virginia General Assembly, 1924. Code section 5099a.
The text
5. It shall thereafter 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.§ 5099a, Code of Virginia (1924), as printed in The Code of Virginia, Michie Company, 1924, p. 1259
2. It shall be a felony for any person wilfully or knowingly to make a registration certificate false as to color or race.§ 5099a, paragraph 2
Paragraph 1 has the State registrar prepare a form on which a person certifies their racial composition, and the racial composition of parents and other ancestors "so far as ascertainable." Paragraph 4 bars a marriage license until the clerk has "reasonable assurance" about the color of both applicants.
The one-sixteenth clause
The one-sixteenth clause is known as the Pocahontas exception. The National Park Service says it let many prominent white Virginian families keep their claimed descent from Pocahontas and John Rolfe without losing their legal status as white. The Library of Virginia says the same.
What it means
The state wrote a legal definition of "white" for the first time, and required race to be recorded and certified. The standard was no trace of any other blood, with one exception for Indian ancestry of one-sixteenth or less.
The man who ran the records, Walter Plecker, applied it. Encyclopedia Virginia says he applied a stricter standard than the statute when deciding who was African American.
Sources
Encyclopedia Virginia, Preservation of Racial Integrity (1924), full text
Encyclopedia Virginia, Racial Integrity Laws (1924-1930)
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