EFFORT TO PRESERVE RACIAL INTEGRITY 111 



tiary, who at different times had two of the family in prison, both claiming 

 the privilege of being placed with the white men. 



Another family originated from a Louisiana mulatto who married a white 

 woman soon after the Civil War. The descendants, who were claiming to 

 be full whites, announced that their grandfather came to Virginia from 

 New Orleans. Knowing that New Orleans had birth records reaching back 

 for more than one hundred years, I wrote to the State Registrar and soon 

 received a certificate showing the name in the baptismal records of the 

 negroes in a Roman Catholic church, in 1830 or thereabouts. 



In like manner we have traced out other families and groups of families 

 in various parts of the State, and believe that comparatively few have 

 escaped us. We do, however, know of several groups which we have not 

 as yet been able to study. One of these, numbering about one hundred, 

 descendants of a white woman and a negro slave, has hopelessly passed out 

 of our reach into the white race, though their pedigree is known to us; 

 while a second group of similar origin is escaping into the white race be- 

 cause of lack of local interest in the matter, though we have them partly 

 classified, confidentially, without recorded evidence. 



We believe that we may safely say that in this, the first attempt to regis- 

 ter the population of a state racially, under the most rigid rule possible, 

 without one dollar of special appropriation, relying simply upon demanding 

 correct information on birth, death, and marriage records, we have made a 

 satisfactory beginning. 



We have aroused the public to the seriousness of racial amalgamation 

 and convinced the mass of the population that racial intermarriage, and 

 even illegitimate sexual mating, is not only a statutory offense but a crime 

 against both the white and the black races. Young white men do not 

 now look upon the seduction of a colored girl and becoming responsible for 

 her pregnancy, and the starting of a new racial problem, as a joke as was 

 once the attitude toward it. Most important of all, the negro race itself is 

 developing a higher moral tone and greater personal pride, which leads the 

 females to resent approaches from white men, rather than to meekly yield, 

 as in the past. This point is substantiated by physicians and other intelli- 

 gent people from various localities. Possibly the most outstanding group 

 exception is that studied by Estabrook and McDougle. In conversation 

 with a social worker, supported by a church mission for these people, she 

 says that she is striving with a considerable degree of success to inculcate 

 in the minds of the young females a higher sexual standard, and to lead 

 them to think that it is not an honor to bear children to white men. 



While two races have never yet lived together without amalgamation, the 



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