1930
The one-drop law
Acts of Assembly 1930, chapter 85. Signed by Governor John Garland Pollard on March 4, 1930.
The text
Every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed a colored person, and every person not a colored person having one-fourth or more American Indian blood shall be deemed an American Indian; except that members of Indian tribes living on reservations allotted them by Virginia, having one-fourth or more of Indian blood and less than one-sixteenth of Negro blood shall be deemed tribal Indians so long as they are domiciled on reservations.Virginia Acts of Assembly, 1930, chapter 85, as quoted in Policing the Races (VCU)
The Senate passed the bill 36 to 0 on February 13, 1930. The House passed it 81 to 3 a week later. Governor Pollard signed it on March 4.
What Virginia Indians said
You have taken our land, taken our forests, taken our fishing grounds - and now with one last stroke of the pen you are trying to take our very name.George Major Cook, Pamunkey chief, to the General Assembly, February 1, 1930
Encyclopedia Virginia reports that because Indians in Amherst and Rockbridge counties did not live on reservations, they would be classified as "colored" under the new law.
What it means
This is the "one drop" rule: any ascertainable African ancestry made a person legally colored. The only Indian category left was for people living on state reservations.
Virginia Indians who did not live on a reservation were classed as colored in the law, whatever their own records or community said.
Sources
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