"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows…
Robert Wright, a free black, married Mary Godsey, a white woman, in 1806. In January 1815 she eloped with a white man, taking with her a slave and other property. Wright overtook the couple and persuaded his wife to return. That November, she fled…
In the Virginia Law to Preserve Racial Integrity, "white" persons were defined as those with "no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian" or "one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian." The second part of the definition was…
In a 1943 letter to local registrars, clerks, and legislators, Plecker asserted, "[T]here does not exist today a descendant of Virginia ancestors claiming to be an Indian who is unmixed with negro blood."
Every person living in Virginia had to register as either "white" or "colored." This designation determined whom a person could marry and where he or she could attend school, among other things.
In his application for a marriage license, Charlie Sorrells indicated that both he and his fiancee, Sophia Jane Woods, were white. A.T. Shields, the same clerk of the court who denied Atha Sorrells' right to marry, signed the license. The Sorrells'…