The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922-1930: "Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro"

Abstract

IN SEPTEMBER 1922 JOHN POWELL, A RICHMOND NATIVE AND WORLD-renowned pianist and composer, and Earnest Sevier Cox, self-proclaimed explorer and ethnographer, organized Post No. 1 of Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America. By following June organization claimed four hundred members in Richmond alone and had added new groups throughout state, all to the preservation and maintenance of Anglo-Saxon ideals and civilization. For next ten years Powell and his supporters dominated racial discourse in Old Dominion; successfully challenged legislature to redefine blacks, whites, and Indians; used power of state agency to enforce law with impunity and without mercy; fundamentally altered lives of hundreds of mixed-race Virginians; and threatened essence of state's devotion to paternalistic relations. (1) The racial extremism and histrionics of leaders of Anglo-Saxon Clubs have attracted attention of both legal scholars and southern historians, particularly those interested in 1924 Racial Integrity Act, major legislative achievement of organization, and Loving v. Virginia, 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed three centuries of miscegenation statutes in United States. (2) Historian Richard B. Sherman, instance, has focused on organization's leaders, a small but determined group of racial zealots, who rejected contention of most southern whites in 1920s that race question was Sherman, who has written most detailed account of legislative efforts of Anglo-Saxon Clubs, has argued in pages of Journal of Southern History that leaders of organization constituted dedicated coterie of extremists who played effectively on fears and prejudices of many whites. Convinced that increasing numbers of persons with traces of black blood were passing as white, they made Last Stand against racial amalgamation. (3) While Sherman is certainly correct that Anglo-Saxon Clubs owed their success to commitment of their leaders, their views and policies resonated with much broader swath of white population. The Anglo-Saxon Clubs did not merely manipulate racial fears and prejudices of whites but also tapped into same assumptions that undergirded entire foundation of white supremacy and championed segregation as system of racial hierarchy and control. The call racial integrity appealed especially to elite whites in Virginia who were obsessed with genealogy and their pristine bloodlines. Lady Astor, instance, reportedly informed her English friends that they lacked purity of white inhabitants of Virginia Piedmont. We are undiluted, she proclaimed. Author Emily Clark satirized this prevailing view in Richmond when one of her characters remarked, for here alone, in all America, flourished Anglo-Saxon race, untainted, pure, and perfect. White elites across Virginia gave their support to Anglo-Saxon Clubs and allowed Powell's message hearing: state senators and delegates approved legislation; governors publicly advocated aims of organization; some of most socially prominent women in Richmond joined ladies auxiliary; and influential newspapers offered editorial support and provided public platform dissemination of organization's extreme views. (4) Although Sherman himself does not suggest that [race] question was settled in 1920s, he does follow lead of George Brown Tindall and other historians in accepting that most white southerners at time believed this to be case. On one hand, this argument is persuasive: leading whites in South did not debate wisdom of segregation. But at same time, white elites in Virginia struggled on daily basis to figure out how best to manage white supremacy. In this sense, they knew that question was not, nor was likely ever to be, settled. …