CONTENT WARNING
Materials in the Library of Virginia’s collections contain historical terms, phrases, and images that are offensive to modern readers. These include demeaning and dehumanizing references to race, ethnicity, and nationality; enslaved or free status; physical and mental ability; and gender and sexual orientation.
Context
This application for a marriage license was used after Virginia's General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act in 1924. On the form, individuals had to indicate that he or she was not "a habitual criminal, idiot, imbecile, hereditary epileptic or insane person” to be given the right to marry. In addition, an individual also had to specify whether he or she was "white, colored, or mixed” as defined by the Racial Integrity Act, which continued Virginia's long-standing law prohibitiing interracial marriage.
During the 1910s and 1920s, white supremacists in Virginia feared that white racial purity was being threatened by "race-mixing." They advocated for legislation that would deliniate who was considered "white" and would require Virginians to officially register their race. The Racial Integrity Act passed in 1924 defined a white person as someone with "no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian," except in the case of someone with "one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian" and who had "no other non-Caucasic blood." This exception was allowed for the benefit of elite white Virginians who claimed descent from the son of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. The Act banned anyone deemed as not white from marrying a white person, and interracial marriages were punishable by a year in jail. The Act also made it a felony to falsely report race on official forms, which carried a one-year prison sentence. County clerks who suspected that both applicants for a marriage license were not white could challenge their right to marry.
One such instance occurred in 1924, when James Conner and Dorothy Johns applied to marry in Rockbridge County. The county court clerk determined that Conner's race was white, but Johns’s race was defined as white and "colored." Under the Racial Integrity Act, the clerk denied the marriage application. Dorothy Johns filed a lawsuit on the grounds that her ancestry was partially Indigenous. At the trial, Walter A. Plecker, the state registrar of vital statistics, presented evidence that Johns's ancestors were recorded as "colored" and not as Indians and therefore she should be identified as "colored" and ineligible to marry a white man. The judge agreed and ordered that the marriage license be denied.
The Racial Integrity Act remained law until the U.S. Supreme Court found it unconsitutional in its Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967.
Citation: “Application for Marriage License,” Rockbridge County (Va.) Clerk's Correspondence, 1912-1943, Local Government Records Collection, Rockbridge County Court Records, Library of Virginia.
Related Document Bank entries:
Virginia Health Bulletin: The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity, March 1924
The Crime of Being Married, Life Magazine, March 18, 1966
Read about the trial in the Lexington Gazette, Sept. 10, 1924, online at Virginia Chronicle.
Standards
Suggested Questions
Preview Activity
Scan it: Scan the document. What words or phrases stand out to you? Why might such a document be considered controversial?
Post Activities
Food for Thought: The concept of racial purity and interracial marriage was at issue for a long time in Virginia. How might the Racial Integrity Act have affected communities and families across the state? Why do you think the Act remained in effect for more than forty years?
Current Connections: What similarities and/or differences do you see between the struggle for interracial marriage and the fight for LGBTQIA+ marriage equality?