Virginia Act to Preserve Racial Integrity of 3/20/1924

Image 1239 534&ACTS OF ASSEMBLY.&[VA. 1. Every employee of the State government or of any department thereof, who is required to be on duty seven days in each calendar week, shall on and after the passage of this act be relieved from duty, without any reduction in pay, and without any requirements that the time so allowed shall subsequently be made up, at least two Sundays in each calendar month. The heads of the various departments are hereby authorized to take such steps as may be necessary to put this act into effect. [centered line] Chap. 371. - An ACT to preserve racial integrity. [bracket] S B 219[end bracket] Approved March 20, 1924. 1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That the State registrar of vital statistics may, as soon as practicable after the taking effect of this act, prepare a form whereon the racial composition of any individual as Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, American Indian, Asiatic Indian, Malay, or and mixture thereof, or any other non-Caucasic strains, and if there be any mixture, then, the racial composition of the parents and other ancestors, in so far as ascertainable, so as to show in what generation such mixture occurred, may be certified by such individual, which form shall be known as a registration certificate. The State registrar may supply to each local registrar a sufficient number of such forms for the purpose of this act; each local registrar may, personally or by deputy, as soon as possible after receiving said forms, have made thereon in duplicate a certificate of the racial composition, as aforesaid, of each person resident in his district, who so desires, born before June 14, 1912, which certificate shall be made over the signature of said person, or in the case of children under fourteen years of age, over the signature of a parent, guardian, or other person standing in loco parentis. One of said certificates for each person thus registering in every district shall be forwarded to the State registrar for his files; the other shall be kept on file by the local registrar. Every local registrar may, as soon as practicable, have such registration certificate made by or for each person in his district who so desires, born before June 14, 1912, for whom he has not on file a registration certificate, or a birth certificate. 2. It shall be a felony for any person willfully or knowingly to make a registration certificate false as to color or race. The willful[sic] making of a false registration or birth certificate shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for one year. 3. For each registration certificate properly made and returned to the State registrar, the local registrar returning the same shall be entitled to a fee of twenty-five cents, to be paid by the registrant. Application for registration and for transcript may be made direct to the State registrar, who may retain the fee for expenses of his office. 4. No marriage license shall be granted until the clerk or deputy clerk has reasonable assurance that the statements as to color of both man and woman are correct. If there is reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk or deputy clerk shall with- [end]