1924 / 2024
100 Years of Eugenic Laws that Shaped Perceptions & Policies
SIGNIFICANCE
The American Eugenics Movement began charting its efforts as early as the 1840s and saw its popularity soar during the Interwar years. The year 1924, however, saw the aggressive lobbying of eugenic theories and “resolutions” to what Lothrop Stoddard called the “rising tide of color.” The state of Virginia stood at the forefront of these efforts, using key proponents – stateside and abroad – to introduce and help pass informal mandates, state laws, and federal legislation to protect the racial purity of the nation.
1924
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March 20 - The Virginia General Assembly passed The Eugenical Sterilization Act which provided for the compulsory sterilization of persons confined at state institutions who “if now discharged or paroled would likely become by the propagation of their own kind a menace to society.”
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March 20 - The Racial Integrity Act, which was passed in Virginia in 1924. The new law prohibited interracial marriage and established the classification of Americans into only two racial groups: White and Non-White (Black). This was known as “paper genocide” as it wiped out entire groups of people from official records. Walter Ashby Plecker headed Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics (1912-1946) and instituted an aggressive charting of all births to establish the race of all Virginians into one of the two categories.
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May 26 - the U.S. government enacted the eugenics-inspired Immigration Act of 1924, which completely prohibited immigration from Asia. Designed to limit all immigration to the U.S., the act was particularly restrictive for Eastern and Southern Europeans and Asians
One hundred years later, remnants of these three laws continue to inform the governing praxes of scientific communities (medicine), social agencies (housing, education, politics), and popular culture (music, performance, advertising, film) in Western society. This conference examines laws from spaces and divergent as Romani, England, Canada, and the United States. Join us.
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