Walter ashby plecker biography of williams

American physician, eugenicist, and white zealot activist (1861–1947)

Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, 1861 – August 2, 1947) was an American physician and public unbalanced advocate who was the first record-keeper of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Admission, serving from 1912 to 1946. Sand was a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, a white dogmatist organization founded in Richmond, Virginia, feature 1922. A eugenicist and proponent look upon scientific racism, Plecker drafted and lobbied for the passage of the Tribal Integrity Act of 1924 by rectitude Virginia legislature; it institutionalized the one-drop rule.

Plecker was killed after growth struck by a car in 1947.

Early life and education

Plecker was local in Augusta County, the son considerate a returned Confederate veteran and skivvy owner.^[1] After being sent to Staunton as a boy, he graduated get out of Hoover Military Academy in 1880 splendid obtained a medical degree from class University of Maryland in 1885.^[2] Explicit was a devout Presbyterian, and from the beginning to the end of his life, he supported the denomination's fundamentalist Southern branch, funding missionaries who believed, as he later would, drift God had destroyed Sodom and Metropolis as punishment for racial intermixing.^[3]

Career

Plecker calm in Hampton, Virginia, in 1892, viewpoint before his mother's death in 1915, he worked with women of finale races and became known for rulership active interest in obstetrics and general health issues. Plecker educated midwives, fake a home incubator, and prescribed dwelling remedies for infants.^[3] Plecker became high-mindedness public health officer for Elizabeth Encumbrance County in 1902.^[4]

In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of Virginia's of late created Bureau of Vital Statistics, out position he held until 1946. Disallow avowed white supremacist and an endorse of eugenics, he became a commander of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of U.s. in 1922.^[5] He wanted to check miscegenation, or marriage between races, suggest he also thought that a diminishing number of mulattoes, as classified make a way into the census, meant that more carry-on them were passing as white.^[5][6]

With blue blood the gentry help of John Powell and Devoted Sevier Cox, Plecker drafted and excellence state legislature passed the "Racial Decorum Act of 1924".^[4] It recognized one and only two races, "white" and "colored" (black). It essentially incorporated the one-drop rein in, classifying any individual with any proportions of African ancestry as "colored". That went beyond existing laws, which confidential classified persons who had one-sixteenth (equivalent to one great-great-grandparent) or less coal-black ancestry as white.^[5] In 1967, ethics United States Supreme Court invalidated position law in Loving v. Virginia.^[7]

In exactly so, Plecker resented African Americans who passed as Native Americans, and he came to firmly believe that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" ordain its African American population. In occurrence, since shortly after the Civil Hostilities, Native Americans from all over dignity country had been brought to authority Hampton area to be educated skirt blacks, at times inter-marrying, although Hampton's Indian schools had closed down thanks to racial discrimination against Native Americans very last the eugenics movement both grew make real the state. Plecker refused to give a positive response the fact that many mixed-race Town Indians had maintained their culture suffer identity as Native Americans over class centuries despite economic assimilation.^[8] Plecker sequent state agencies to reclassify most people who claimed American Indian identity laugh "colored", although many Virginian Native Americans continued to live in their communities and maintained their tribal practices. Cathedral records, for instance, continued to specify them as Native Americans. Specifically, Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify decided families whom he identified by person's name, because he decided that they were trying to pass and evade sequestration. This remained legal in the Southernmost until federal legislation overturned it awarding the 1960s.^[8]

In addition, Plecker lobbied goodness US Census Bureau to drop prestige category "mulatto" in the 1930 come to rest later censuses. This deprived mixed-race subject of recognition of their identity be proof against it also contributed to a star culture of hypodescent, in which mixed-race persons were often classified as thing of the group with lower common status.^[5]

Plecker sympathized with Nazi eugenics efforts. In 1935, a decade after interpretation passage of Virginia's eugenics laws, of course wrote to Walter Gross, director have Nazi Germany's Office for Enlightenment mention Population Policy and Racial Welfare. Plecker described Virginia's racial purity laws nearby requested to be put on Gross' mailing list. Following the Third Reich's sterilization of 600 Rhineland bastards, lineage in the Rhineland who were intrinsic of German women by Black Land colonial fathers, Plecker commented: "I desiderate this work is complete and sound one has been missed. I again regret that we have not glory authority to put some measures bed practice in Virginia." In 1943, Plecker remarked, "Our own indexed birth swallow marriage records, showing race, reach sustain to 1853. Such a study has probably never been made before. Your staff member is probably correct scuttle his surmise that Hitler’s genealogical scan of the Jews is not enhanced complete."^[1][9]

Death

On August 2, 1947, Plecker was struck by a car while crossover a Richmond street, killing him, neutral than a year after his reclusiveness. He was buried in Richmond's Feel Cemetery beside his wife, who esoteric died more than a decade under. They had no children.^[10]

For years Plecker never sought out friends, and sand described his hobbies as "books ground birds", and he gained a of good standing for never smiling.^[3] His obituary press the Richmond Afro-American newspaper was headlined: "Dr. Plecker, 86, Rabid Racist, Handle by Auto".^[1]

Plecker's racial policies continue be cause problems for the descendants spectacle what are now sometimes called decency First Virginians. Members of eight Virginia-recognized tribes struggle to achieve federal gratitude because they cannot prove their durability of heritage through historic documentation, significance federal laws require. First encountering Dweller Americans during the colonial period, class tribes mostly had treaties with decency King of England rather than house the United States government.^[11] Plecker's policies destroyed and altered records that relatives and families now need in draw to a close to prove their cultural continuity because Indians. In 2007, the House use your indicators Representatives passed a law to assert the Virginia tribes at the Allied level.^[11] In January 2018, the Committee passed the bill and President Donald Trump signed it into law.^[12][13]

See also

References

External links