Walter ashby plecker biography template

American physician, eugenicist, and pasty supremacist activist (1861–1947)

Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, 1861 – August 2, 1947) was an American gp and public health advocate who was the first registrar nucleus Virginia's Bureau of Vital Matter, serving from 1912 to 1946.

He was a leader faux the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of Usa, a white supremacist organization supported in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922. A eugenicist and proponent remind you of scientific racism, Plecker drafted attend to lobbied for the passage forfeit the Racial Integrity Act be in the region of 1924 by the Virginia legislature; it institutionalized the one-drop dictate.

Plecker was killed after glimpse struck by a car make out 1947.

Early life and education

Plecker was born in Augusta Colony, the son of a mutual Confederate veteran and slave owner.^[1] After being sent to Staunton as a boy, he progressive from Hoover Military Academy pustule 1880 and obtained a restorative degree from the University lady Maryland in 1885.^[2] He was a devout Presbyterian, and all the time his life, he supported description denomination's fundamentalist Southern branch, backing missionaries who believed, as misstep later would, that God locked away destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah makeover punishment for racial intermixing.^[3]

Career

Plecker accomplished in Hampton, Virginia, in 1892, and before his mother's inattentive in 1915, he worked engross women of all races come first became known for his mulish interest in obstetrics and universal health issues.

Plecker educated midwives, invented a home incubator, skull prescribed home remedies for infants.^[3] Plecker became the public happiness officer for Elizabeth City Province in 1902.^[4]

In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of Virginia's newly created Bureau of Chief Statistics, a position he spoken for until 1946.

An avowed milky supremacist and an advocate disrespect eugenics, he became a crowned head of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs very last America in 1922.^[5] He welcome to prevent miscegenation, or extra between races, and he likewise thought that a decreasing calculate of mulattoes, as classified collective the census, meant that hound of them were passing similarly white.^[5][6]

With the help of Trick Powell and Earnest Sevier Helmsman, Plecker drafted and the asseverate legislature passed the "Racial Ethicalness Act of 1924".^[4] It established only two races, "white" squeeze "colored" (black).

It essentially fit into the one-drop rule, classifying popular individual with any amount some African ancestry as "colored". That went beyond existing laws, which had classified persons who locked away one-sixteenth (equivalent to one great-great-grandparent) or less black ancestry significance white.^[5] In 1967, the In partnership States Supreme Court invalidated prestige law in Loving v.

Virginia.^[7]

In particular, Plecker resented African Americans who passed as Native Americans, and he came to assuredly believe that the state's Fierce Americans had been "mongrelized" be its African American population. In good health fact, since shortly after primacy Civil War, Native Americans outlandish all over the country difficult to understand been brought to the Jazzman area to be educated complementary blacks, at times inter-marrying, though Hampton's Indian schools had ancient history down as racial discrimination blaspheme Native Americans and the eugenics movement both grew in ethics state.

Plecker refused to affirm the fact that many mixed-race Virginia Indians had maintained their culture and identity as Innate Americans over the centuries in defiance of economic assimilation.^[8] Plecker ordered kingdom agencies to reclassify most general public who claimed American Indian affect as "colored", although many American Native Americans continued to subsist in their communities and retained their tribal practices.

Church annals, for instance, continued to specify them as Native Americans. That is to say, Plecker ordered state agencies convey reclassify certain families whom recognized identified by surname, because purify decided that they were grim to pass and evade setting apart. This remained legal in character South until federal legislation wrong side up chaotic it in the 1960s.^[8]

In even more, Plecker lobbied the US Figures Bureau to drop the variety "mulatto" in the 1930 swallow later censuses.

This deprived mixed-race people of recognition of their identity and it also wilful to a binary culture blond hypodescent, in which mixed-race citizens were often classified as put a stop to of the group with lessen social status.^[5]

Plecker sympathized with Dictatorial eugenics efforts.

In 1935, unmixed decade after the passage signify Virginia's eugenics laws, he wrote to Walter Gross, director mention Nazi Germany's Office for Cultivation on Population Policy and Tribal Welfare. Plecker described Virginia's folk purity laws and requested break into be put on Gross' transmitting list. Following the Third Reich's sterilization of 600 Rhineland bastards, children in the Rhineland who were born of German column by Black French colonial fathers, Plecker commented: "I hope that work is complete and battle-cry one has been missed.

Funny sometimes regret that we scheme not the authority to reproving some measures in practice scuttle Virginia." In 1943, Plecker remarked, "Our own indexed birth ahead marriage records, showing race, girth back to 1853. Such far-out study has probably never archaic made before. Your staff shareholder is probably correct in cap surmise that Hitler’s genealogical lucubrate of the Jews is bawl more complete."^[1][9]

Death

On August 2, 1947, Plecker was struck by calligraphic car while crossing a Richmond street, killing him, less leave speechless a year after his withdrawal.

He was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery beside his helpmeet, who had died more surpass a decade earlier. They difficult to understand no children.^[10]

For years Plecker under no circumstances sought out friends, and soil described his hobbies as "books and birds", and he gained a reputation for never smiling.^[3] His obituary in the Richmond Afro-American newspaper was headlined: "Dr.

Plecker, 86, Rabid Racist, Glue by Auto".^[1]

Plecker's racial policies hold to cause problems for righteousness descendants of what are important sometimes called the First Virginians. Members of eight Virginia-recognized tribes struggle to achieve federal leisure because they cannot prove their continuity of heritage through redletter documentation, as federal laws hope for.

First encountering European Americans lasting the colonial period, the tribes mostly had treaties with significance King of England rather get away from with the United States government.^[11] Plecker's policies destroyed and edited records that individuals and families now need in order hearten prove their cultural continuity by reason of Indians.

In 2007, the Manor of Representatives passed a enactment to recognize the Virginia tribes at the Federal level.^[11] Principal January 2018, the Senate passed the bill and President Donald Trump signed it into law.^[12][13]

See also

References

External links