{"id":41599,"date":"2015-07-01T14:45:11","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T14:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41599"},"modified":"2015-07-01T16:14:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T16:14:46","slug":"how-a-long-dead-white-supremacist-still-threatens-the-future-of-virginias-indian-tribes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41599","title":{"rendered":"How a long-dead white supremacist still threatens the future of Virginia\u2019s Indian tribes"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a long-dead white supremacist still threatens the future of Virginia\u2019s Indian tribes<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-07-01<\/p>\n

Joe Heim<\/a><\/strong>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nWalter A. Plecker\u2019s<\/a> goal as Virginia\u2019s registrar of vital statistics was to ban race-mixing. He declared there were no true Indians left because of marriages with blacks. (Richmond Times-Dispatch<\/em>)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Virginia\u2019s Indian tribes<\/a> have faced numerous obstacles in their decades-old quest for federal recognition. But one person has long stood in their way \u2014 and he\u2019s been dead for 68 years.<\/p>\n

Walter Plecker<\/a> \u2014 a physician, eugenicist and avowed white supremacist \u2014 ran Virginia\u2019s<\/a> Bureau of Vital Statistics with single-minded resolve over 34 years in the first half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Though he died in 1947, Plecker\u2019s shadow still lingers over the state, a vestige of a vicious era when racist practices were an integral part of government policy and Virginia officials ruthlessly enforced laws created to protect what they considered a master white race.<\/p>\n

For Virginia\u2019s Indians, the policies championed by Plecker threatened their very existence, nearly wiping out the tribes who greeted the country\u2019s first English settlers and who claim Pocahontas<\/a> as an ancestor. This month, the legacy of those laws could again help sabotage an effort by the Pamunkey<\/a> people to become the state\u2019s first federally recognized tribe.<\/p>\n

Obsessed with the idea of white superiority, Plecker championed legislation that would codify the idea that people with one drop of \u201cNegro\u201d blood could not be classified as white<\/a>. His efforts led the Virginia legislature to pass the Racial Integrity Act of 1924<\/em><\/a>, a law that criminalized interracial marriage and also required that every birth in the state be recorded by race with the only options being \u201cWhite\u201d and \u201cColored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plecker was proud of the law and his role in creating it. It was, he said, \u201cthe most perfect expression of the white ideal, and the most important eugenical effort that has been made in 4,000 years.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

The act didn\u2019t just make blacks in Virginia second-class citizens \u2014 it also erased any acknowledgment of Indians, whom Plecker claimed no longer truly existed in the commonwealth. With a stroke of a pen, Virginia was on a path to eliminating the identity of the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi<\/a>, the Chickahominy<\/a>, the Monacan<\/a>, the Rappahannock<\/a>, the Nansemond<\/a> and the rest of Virginia\u2019s tribes…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a long-dead white supremacist still threatens the future of Virginia\u2019s Indian tribes The Washington Post 2015-07-01 Joe Heim, Staff Writer Walter A. Plecker\u2019s goal as Virginia\u2019s registrar of vital statistics was to ban race-mixing. He declared there were no true Indians left because of marriages with blacks. (Richmond Times-Dispatch) Virginia\u2019s Indian tribes have faced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,8,3015,26,5113,20,693],"tags":[20338,2875,6372,1857,2474,2581],"class_list":["post-41599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-politics","category-triracial","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-joe-heim","tag-the-washington-post","tag-walter-a-plecker","tag-walter-ashby-plecker","tag-walter-plecker","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}