EFFORT TO PRESERVE RACIAL INTEGRITY 107 



and actual persecution by those whose personal interests are involved, by 

 their friends, and by those who profit by cheap negro labor. 



When in vision the mind reaches across the ocean in hope that in Northern 

 Europe the white race at its center may at least maintain its purity, the 

 negro is beheld accepted upon equal terms and marrying without hindrance 

 light-haired, blue-eyed Teutons. 



The clouds, however, in our homeland are not wholly black but have 

 their golden border. The subject has been studied from all angles and in 

 all lands. The public has in recent years shown an interest in learning the 

 facts, and in considering the means, if possible, of saving the dominant race 

 of America from being submerged in the rising flood of mongrelization. 



Earnest Sevier Cox, in his book, "White America," summarizes the result 

 of his researches in all of the continents and amongst all races, and gives his 

 conclusion in one sentence; that, "To solve the problem, the races concerned 

 must be separated or amalgamated." This seems to be the final conclusion 

 to which students of this question are coming. A large branch of the negro 

 race, led by Marcus Garvey, has reached the same conclusion, and is desir- 

 ous of centralizing the negroes of the western world into a black nation in 

 Africa. 



While many have been studying the problem, the State of Virginia took 

 the initiative in actually enacting in 1924 what is known as the "Racial 

 Integrity" law. This law for the first time definitely defines a white person 

 as one with no ascertainable degree of negro blood, and with equal clearness 

 in 1930 states that a colored person is one with any ascertainable degree of 

 negro blood, other non-white races being included in the same class, except 

 that a person with fifteen-sixteenths or more of white blood, the rest Ameri- 

 can Indian, without negro admixture, may be classed as white. Similar 

 laws were soon adopted by the states of Georgia and Alabama. Other 

 states have been deterred from following, either from lack of leadership in 

 the legislatures, or because of racial complications already existing, and the 

 difficulty of enforcement. These states are still content to rely upon their 

 present inadequate marriage laws, permitting classification as white of 

 persons with one-sixteenth, one-eighth, or one-fourth negro blood, and 

 upon the public abhorrence of mixed marriages. Unfortunately, nineteen 

 northern and western states and the District of Columbia, including the 

 national capital, place no restrictions whatever upon such marriages. 



Virginia alone, though in a feeble way, attempted to fix the responsibility 

 of classifying the population of the State by saying in its law that the State 

 Registrar of Vital Statistics may register by color those who apply for such 

 registration. This wording, "may," was reduced from the imperative 



