Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act: the 1924 health bulletin | Source Catalog
Public source-catalog entry · GOV-009
Record information
Original or catalog title: Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act: the 1924 health bulletin
Record type: Statute and bulletin. Date: March 1924. Places or communities: Virginia.
Catalog summary
Three scanned pages reproduce the health department bulletin announcing the new racial integrity law. The act restricted marriage and defined whiteness with an exception for limited American Indian ancestry. Compare the statute with Plecker’s letters to see how officials pursued its enforcement.
Source citation
Virginia Health Bulletin, vol. XVI, March 1924, “The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity.” Library of Virginia, Rockbridge Clerk’s Correspondence, 12-1245-005 to 007.
Reading the source in context
Read the operative wording, date, jurisdiction, and affected population. Distinguish a law's text from its enforcement and later commentary. A historical enrollment entry and present-day citizenship eligibility are different questions.
The summary above is a modern catalog description. It is separate from the original record and does not establish a connection to any reader's family. Consult the source, then corroborate people, places, dates, and relationships.
Separate the bulletin, statute, and enforcement records
The Library of Virginia groups the 1924 bulletin with registration forms, marriage material, and later Plecker letters. These are different record types. The bulletin explains and promotes the law; the statute states the legal provisions; correspondence can document particular enforcement efforts.
Short transcription from the statute
The following historical phrase appears in section 5 of the 1924 law's exception concerning American Indian ancestry:
one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian
Read the whole section: the exception also imposes a condition concerning other ancestry. This short extract alone does not convey the complete classification rule. The wording is a historical legal category, not a scientific definition of identity.
The law also addresses racial registration, penalties for false certificates, and marriage-license decisions. For a readable transcription, consult the Code of Virginia edition reproduced by Virginia Humanities, section 5099a, page 1259.
A research workflow for a family's record
Identify the original document and its creation date. Determine who supplied the information and who recorded it. Compare the same person across birth, marriage, death, census, and other surviving records without assuming that every difference had the same cause.
If correspondence concerns a particular family, check names, residence, relationships, and dates against independent records. A registrar's assertion is evidence of that official's statement; evaluate the supporting material before adopting it as the family's history.
Keep the bulletin's printed page references separate from the three-page PDF's image numbers. That distinction helps another researcher find the same passage.
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