VIRGINIA'S ATTEMPT TO ADJUST THE COLOR PROBLEM
By W. A. Plecker, M.D., FELLOW A.P.H.A.
State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Richmond, Virginia
Read at the joint session of the Public Health Administration and Vital Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association at the Fifty-third Annual Meeting at Detroit Michigan, October 23, 1924. This copy from
The American Journal of Public Health, 1925.
When
two races live together there is but one possible outcome, and that
is*the amalgamation of the races. The result of this will be the
elimination ofthe higher type, the one on which progress depends. In the
mixture the lower race loses its native good qualities which may be
utilized and developed in the presence of a dominant race.
The
mongrels are superior in mental power to the lower race. They are more
cunning and more capable, but they lack the creative power of the higher
race, and cannot sustain a lasting civilization that will rank with the
best of the world.
History affords many examples.
Egypt in the day of her greatness was white. But the white Pharaohs
began to extend their dominion south into the negro land, and to bring
back multitudes of captives for laborers and soldiers, special mention
being made also in their records that women in large numbers were
included. Interbreeding with these negroes began and continued through
many centuries until the country became largely negroid.
The
climax was finally reached when one of the Pharaohs took to himself a
negro wife and his mulatto son Taharka succeeding to the throne. The
colorline had vanished and with it Egypt's greatness. Assyrian invaders
met with no effective resistance. From that day to this Egypt has been a
mongrel nation, incapable of initiative, and now dependent upon foreign
protection and leadership.
India affords a parallel example.
Four thousand years ago the invasion of India by Aryans occurred. These
came into contact with a mixed population of white-yellow- black
composition. The conquerors attempted to prevent their own amalgamation
with the natives by establishing a rigorous caste system, which was not
like the present one based upon occupation, but upon color. This system failed, and though caste is still in force in India the reason for it no longer exists.
Modern
South Africa is a melancholy example of what may occur when the
intermixture which inevitably results is hastened by fanatical religious
teaching and misguided legal interference from the mother country.
Major E.S. Cox, who spent years in that region and in other countries
studying race conditions, in his book "White America," (White America
Society, Richmond, VA) gives a graphic account of the struggle made by
the determined colonists against the imposition. They lost out, and the
population of Cape Colony province is today largely mixed, showing how
quickly this condition results when the natural process is speeded up by
negrophilism and the law.
Let us return now to our own country, and, as we are considering Virginia, to that state in particular.
There
are about twelve million negroes; of various degrees of admixture in
the Union today. Of the population of Virginia, nearly one-third is
classed as negro, but many of these people are negroid, some being
near-white, some having actually succeeded in getting across into the
white class.
The mixed negroes are nearly all the result of
illegitimate intercourse. The well known moral laxity resulting from
close contact of a civilized with a primitive race makes illegitimate
intermixture an easy matter. This is illustrated by the fact that the
illegitimate birth-rate of Virginia negroes is thirty-two times that of
Rhode Island, while the District of Columbia rate is thirty-seven times,
and that of Maryland forty-six times.
In the days when slavery
was still a blight upon our state, it was quite acommon occurrence for
white men to father children born to the negroservants. The history, as
related to me, of at least one colony of people known as "Issue" or
"Free Issue," now spread over several counties, is that they originated
in part in that manner.
It was considered undesirable to retain
these mulattoes on the place, bearing the family name, and a number from
one county were given theirfreedom and colonized in a distant county.
These intermarried amongs tthemselves and with some people of Indian-
negro-white descent, and receivedan additional infusion of white blood,
either illegitimately or by actual marriage with low-grade whites.
At
present these people are claiming to be white, or Indian, and under
theformer law when a person with one-sixteenth negro blood could be
declared white, they were able in some instances to establish their
claim legally.
These mixed breeds are not classed as white by
the people of the community, and they will not associate with the
genuine negroes. Five hundred or more in number they thus constitute a
class of their own, and a serious problem in that county and others to
which they migrate. If refused classification as white they claim to be
Indian, and as such have been accepted in the birth reports to avoid
listing them as white.
In a recent test case, the court upon
evidence submitted from our birthrecords reaching back to 1853, and from
the testimony of old residents, decided that these people under the new
"Racial Integrity" law cannot be permitted to intermarry with whites.
Another
large colony which extends over into North Carolina probably has a
similar origin. We have also compromised with these, and accept
certificates as Indians, which indicates to us that they are not white.
In
another county are about forty descendants of an illegitimate mating of
a negro man and white woman four generations back. All of these
haveformerly succeeded in being classed as white. though under the new
law our office has supplied to the clerks who issue marriage licenses,
school authorities, commonwealth's attorneys, physicians and local
registrars, a complete family tree, with the injunction to class them as
colored.
Similar conditions exist in other localities, though
not yet so far advanced. A case was recently discovered where a white
man married a mulatto woman (probably in another state), and now has
nine children, four of them being reported to our office as white.
Investigation revealed the fact that two other women bearing the same
family name had mated with white men and were raising large families of
children.
Another man whose birth was reported in 1878, both
parents being registered as colored, had the court declare him a white
man under the one-sixteenth law; married a white woman, and has four
children reported as white by physicians.
The question of their
color was referred to our office by the school authorities when the
facts were discovered, and the white school advised under the new law
not to receive them, though they engaged a lawyer to assist them.
These
examples illustrate the fact that even in Virginia where the questions
of race and birth receive as much attention as anywhere in the country,
the process of amalgamation is nevertheless going on, and in some
localities is well advanced. Complete ruin can probably be held off for
several centuries longer, but we have no reason to hope that we shall
prove the one and only example in the history of the world of two races
living together without amalgamation.
In Mexico, much of South
America and the West Indies the process is practically complete, the
mixture being Spanish or Portuguese, Indian and negro. Some portions of
southern Europe have undergone a similar admixture. Immigrants from
these lands to this country, while really negroid, are classed as white.
Several
South American countries, or portions of them, still retain a
considerable degree of race purity, which is being maintained by
European immigration.
The immigration law recently passed by our
Congress will stop the legal admission of Mongolians and will check much
of the negroid immigration from elsewhere in the old world, but it will
not prevent negro and negroidimmigration from other parts of the
western hemisphere. It is estimated that there are today from 500,000 to
750,000 Mexicans in the state of Texas alone, and that Mexicans compose
more than half of the population of .
But it is possible to
stop the legal intermixture, and that Virginia has attempted to do in
the above mentioned law, which defines a white person as one with "no
trace whatsoever of blood other than Caucasian," and makes it a felony
punishable by confinement for one year in the penitentiary to make a
willfully false statement as to color.
Clerks are not permitted
to grant licenses for white persons to marry those with any trace of
colored blood. It is needless to call attention to the sad plight of a
white person who is thus imposed upon or of a white woman who under such
circumstances would give birth to a child of marked negro
characteristics, as will occur from time to time under Mendel's law.
The
new law places upon the office of the Bureau of Vital Statistics much
additional work, but we believe it will be a strong factor in preventing
the intermarriage of the races and in preventing persons of negro
descent from passing themselves off as white.
We are greatly
encouraged by the interest and cooperation of physicians, local
registrars, clerks, school authorities, the general public, and even the
midwives. Our success during the first four months of the enforcement
of this law, in securing more accurate statements as to color on our
birth certificates and in correcting previously existing errors is far
beyond our expectation.
The states which now permit free
intermarriage of the races, as listed in"American Marriage Laws",
(Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1919) are:
Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The most urgent need is the speedy adoption by these states and the District of Columbia of a law forbidding the intermarriage of the white and colored races. The
white race in this land is the foundation upon which rests its
civilization, and is responsible for the leading position which we
occupy amongst the nations of the world. Is it not therefore just and
right thatthis race decide for itself what its composition shall be, and
attempt, as Virginia has, to maintain its purity?
This is
working no hardship and no injustice upon the other races; for the same
effort tends at the same time to maintain the purity of their races as
well.
That the mongrel races are liable to perpetuate the
undesirable qualities of both their constituent stocks is abundantly
demonstrated by a study of the larger and older of the mongrel groups in
Virginia, as well as upon a study on a far larger scale in various
other parts of the world.
The colored races therefore should be
equally zealous in preventing both the legal and illegal admixture of
the races. We are glad to say that the true negro of Virginia is
beginning to appreciate this point and is agreeing to the wisdom of this
movement. Our chief trouble is with some of the near-whites who desire
to change from the colored to the white class.
