Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, 1861 – August 2, 1947) was an American
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
and
public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
advocate who was the first registrar of
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving from 1912 to 1946. He was a leader of the
Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America
The Anglo Saxon Clubs of America was a white supremacist political organization which was active in the United States in the 1920s, and lobbied in favor of anti-miscegenation laws and against immigration from outside of Northern Europe. Founded in ...
, a
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
organization founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922. He drafted and lobbied for the passage of the
Racial Integrity Act of 1924 by the Virginia legislature; it institutionalized the
one-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
.
Early life and education
Plecker was born in
Augusta County
Augusta County is a county in the Shenandoah Valley on the western edge of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The second-largest county of Virginia by total area, it completely surrounds the independent cities of Staunton and Waynesboro. Its cou ...
, the son of a returned
Confederate veteran. Sent to Staunton as a boy, he graduated from
Hoover Military Academy
Hoover may refer to:
Music
* Hoover (band), an American post-hardcore band
* Hooverphonic, a Belgian band originally named Hoover
* Hoover (singer), Willis Hoover, a country and western performer active in 1960s and '70s
* "Hoover" (song), a 2016 ...
in 1880 and obtained a
medical degree
A medical degree is a professional degree admitted to those who have passed coursework in the fields of medicine and/or surgery from an accredited medical school. Obtaining a degree in medicine allows for the recipient to continue on into special ...
from the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...
in 1885. He was a devout
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their n ...
, and throughout his life he supported the denomination's fundamentalist Southern branch, funding missionaries who believed, as he later would, that
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
had destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah () were two legendary biblical cities destroyed by God for their wickedness. Their story parallels the Genesis flood narrative in its theme of God's anger provoked by man's sin (see Genesis 19:1–28). They are mentioned frequ ...
as punishment for
racial intermixing.
Career
Plecker settled in
Hampton, Virginia
Hampton () is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 137,148. It is the List ...
, in 1892, and before his mother's death in 1915, he worked with women of all races and became known for his active interest in
obstetrics
Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a sur ...
and public health issues. Plecker educated
midwives
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; c ...
, invented a home
incubator
An incubator is anything that performs or facilitates various forms of incubation, and may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Incubator (culture), a device used to grow and maintain microbiological cultures or cell cultures
* Incubator (egg), a de ...
, and prescribed home remedies for infants.
His efforts are credited with an almost 50% decline in birthing deaths for black mothers.
Plecker became the public health officer for Elizabeth City County in 1902.
[http://www.virginiamemory.com/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/people/walter_ashby_plecker]
In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of Virginia's newly created Bureau of Vital Statistics, a position he held until 1946. An avowed
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
and an advocate of
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
, he became a leader of the
Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America
The Anglo Saxon Clubs of America was a white supremacist political organization which was active in the United States in the 1920s, and lobbied in favor of anti-miscegenation laws and against immigration from outside of Northern Europe. Founded in ...
in 1922.
He wanted to prevent
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
, or marriage between races, and he also thought that a decreasing number of
mulattoes
(, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese ...
, as classified in the census, meant that more of them were passing as
white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...
.
With the help of
John Powell and
Earnest Sevier Cox
Earnest Sevier Cox (January 24, 1880 – April 26, 1966) was an American Methodist preacher, political activist and white supremacist. He is best known for his political campaigning for stricter segregation between blacks and whites in the Uni ...
, Plecker drafted and the state legislature passed the "
Racial Integrity Act of 1924".
It recognized only two races, "white" and "colored" (black). It essentially incorporated the
one-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
, classifying any individual with any amount of African ancestry as "colored". This went beyond existing laws, which had classified persons who had one-sixteenth (equivalent to one great-great-grandparent) or less black ancestry as white.
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the law in
Loving v. Virginia.
In particular, Plecker resented
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s who
passed as Native Americans, and he came to firmly believe that the state's
Native Americans had been "mongrelized" with its
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
population. In fact, since shortly after the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
, Native Americans from all over the country had been brought to the
Hampton area to be educated alongside blacks, at times inter-marrying, although Hampton's
Indian schools had closed down as racial discrimination against Native Americans and the eugenics movement both grew in the state. Plecker refused to recognize the fact that many mixed-race
Virginia Indian
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the indigenous tribes who currently live or have historically lived in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
All of the Commonwealth of Virginia used to be Virgini ...
s had maintained their culture and identity as Native Americans over the centuries despite economic assimilation.
[E. Moten, "Racial Integrity or 'Race Suicide': Virginia's Eugenic Movement, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Work of Walter A. Plecker"](_blank)
''Negro History Bulletin'', April–September 1999, p. 2, accessed April 8, 2008 Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify most citizens who claimed American Indian identity as "colored", although many Virginian Native Americans continued to live in their communities and maintained their tribal practices. Church records, for instance, continued to identify them as Native Americans. Specifically, Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify certain families whom he identified by surname, because he decided that they were trying to pass and evade
segregation Segregation may refer to:
Separation of people
* Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space
* School segregation
* Housing segregation
* Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
. This remained legal in the
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...
until federal legislation overturned it in the 1960s.
In addition, Plecker lobbied the US Census Bureau to drop the category "mulatto" in the 1930 and later censuses. This deprived
mixed-race
Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-eth ...
people of recognition of their identity and it also contributed to a binary culture of
hypodescent, in which mixed-race persons were often classified as part of the group with lower social status.
[J. Douglas Smith, "The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922–1930: 'Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro'"](_blank)
''Journal of Southern History'' 68, no. 1 (February, 2002): 65–106, accessed 6 November 2022
Death
Plecker was hit by a car while crossing a Richmond street, and he died on August 2, 1947, less than a year after his retirement. He is buried in
Hollywood cemetery in Virginia beside his wife, who died more than a decade earlier. They had no children. For years Plecker never sought out friends, and he described his hobbies as "books and birds", and he gained a reputation for never smiling.
His obituary in the ''Richmond Afro-American'' newspaper was headlined: "Dr. Plecker, 86, Rabid Racist, Killed by Auto".
Plecker's racial policies continue to cause problems for the descendants of what are now sometimes called the First Virginians. Members of eight Virginia-recognized tribes struggle to achieve federal recognition because they cannot prove their continuity of heritage through historic documentation, as federal laws require. First encountering
European Americans
European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent E ...
during the colonial period, the tribes mostly had treaties with the
King of England
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...
rather than with the
United States government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
.
["House Approves Federal Recognition for VA Tribes On Eve of 400th Jamestown Anniversary, Tribes Reach Recognition Milestone", Office of U.S. Congressman Jim Moran, 8 May 2007](_blank)
Plecker's policies destroyed and altered records that individuals and families now need in order to prove their cultural continuity as Indians. In 2007, the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
passed a law to recognize the Virginia tribes at the Federal level.
In January 2018, the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
passed the bill and the president signed it into law.
"Trump signs bill giving recognition to 6 Virginia tribes"
by Associated Press, January 30, 2018.
Quotes
* "Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood as racial equality
Racial equality is a situation in which people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western societ ...
." (1925)
* the "sickening and saddest feature...the considerable number of degenerate white women giving birth to mulatto children" (1925)
* "...insanity, tendency to crime, and immorality are almost surely transmitted to their children, especially when both parents are of the same class. The worst forms of undesirables born amongst us are those whose parents are of different races."
See also
* Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagoni ...
* Institutional racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, health ...
* One-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Frontlin" ...
* Hypodescent
* Racial Integrity Act of 1924
* Indian blood
References
External links
"Kaine and Warner push for federal recognition for 6 Virginia tribes"
by Joe Heim, ''Washington Post'' March 20, 2017
by Joe Heim, ''Washington Post'', July 1, 2015
"The Black-and-White World of Walter Ashby Plecker"
by Warren Fiske, ''The Virginian-Pilot'', August 18, 2004
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plecker, Walter Ashby
1861 births
1947 deaths
People from Augusta County, Virginia
Presbyterians from Virginia
American white supremacists
American public health doctors
People from Hampton, Virginia
Multiracial affairs in the United States
History of Virginia
Road incident deaths in Virginia