Editing One-drop rule (section)

==Legislation and practice==
Both before and after the [[American Civil War]], many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into the white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, an 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as [[mulatto]] (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry.<ref name=Rothman/>{{rp|68}} Social acceptance and identity were historically the keys to racial identity. Virginia's one-fourth standard remained in place until 1910, when the standard was changed to one sixteenth. In [[Racial Integrity Act of 1924|1930]]<!-- According to [[Racial Integrity Act of 1924]] article: That act is the most famous "racial integrity law," but the 1930 law is the one which introduced the "one drop" rule -->, even the one sixteenth standard was abandoned in favor of a more stringent standard. The act defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had ''any'' African ancestry.

Although the Virginia legislature increased restrictions on free blacks following the [[Nat Turner's Rebellion]] of 1831, it refrained from establishing a one-drop rule. When a proposal was made by [[Travis H. Eppes]] and debated in 1853, representatives realized that such a rule could adversely affect whites, as they were aware of [[First Families of Virginia#Pocahontas|generations of interracial relationships]]. During the debate, a person wrote to the [[Charlottesville, Virginia|Charlottesville]] newspaper:

{{blockquote|[If a one-drop rule were adopted], I doubt not, if many who are reputed to be white, and are in fact so, do not in a very short time find themselves instead of being elevated, reduced by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, to the level of a free negro.<ref name=Rothman/>{{rp|230}} }}

The state legislators agreed. No such law was passed until 1924, apparently assisted by the fading recollection of such mixed familial histories. In the 21st century, such interracial family histories are being revealed as individuals undergo DNA genetic analysis.

The [[Melungeon]]s are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white".<ref name=Heinegg>{{cite web|first=Paul|last= Heinegg|url=http://www.freeafricanamericans.com |title=Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware|date= 1999–2005}}</ref> Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the 19th to the 20th centuries.

Pursuant to Reconstruction later in the 19th century, southern states acted to impose racial segregation by law and restrict the liberties of blacks, specifically passing laws to exclude them from politics and voting. From 1890 to 1908, all of the former Confederate states passed such laws, and most preserved disfranchisement until after passage of federal civil rights laws in the 1960s. At the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1895, an anti-[[miscegenation]] law and changes that would [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disfranchise]] blacks were proposed. Delegates debated a proposal for a one-drop rule to include in these laws. [[George D. Tillman]] said the following in opposition:

{{blockquote|If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to intermarry among people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. Those men served creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of&nbsp;... colored blood. The pure-blooded white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father.<ref name="courier">"All Niggers, More or Less!", ''The News and Courier'', 17 October 1895.</ref><ref>Joel Williamson, ''New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States'' (New York, 1980), p. 93.</ref>}}

In 1865, Florida passed an act that both outlawed miscegenation and defined the amount of black ancestry needed to be legally defined as a "person of color". The act stated that "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color." (This was the equivalent of one great-grandparent.) Additionally, the act outlawed fornication, as well as the intermarrying of white females with men of color.<sup>Citation needed</sup> However, the act permitted the continuation of marriages between white persons and persons of color that were established before the law was enacted.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kAI4AAAAIAAJ&dq=Laws+of+the+State+of+Florida%2C+First+Session+of+the+Fourteenth+General+Assembly+Under+the+Amended+Constitution+1865-6&pg=PA30 ''Laws of the State of Florida, First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly Under the Amended Constitution 1865–'6'']. Chapter 1, 468 Sec.(1)-(3).</ref>

The one-drop rule was not made law until the early 20th century.<sup>Citation needed</sup> This was decades after the Civil War, [[abolitionism in the United States|emancipation]], and the [[Reconstruction era]]. It followed restoration of [[white supremacy]] in the South and the passage of [[Jim Crow]] [[racial segregation]] laws. In the 20th century, it was also associated with the rise of [[eugenics]] and ideas of [[racial purity]].{{citation needed|date=June 2016}} From the late 1870s on, white [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]] regained political power in the former Confederate states and passed racial [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] laws controlling public facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890 to 1910 to achieve disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them, such as [[literacy test]]s, longer residency requirements and [[Poll taxes in the United States|poll taxes]].

The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] decisions which upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many. White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing [[Jim Crow laws]] that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'', the Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910 to 1930. Among them were [[Hypodescent#Hypo/hyperdescent in Reconstruction, late 19th century and 20th-century United States|hypodescent laws]], defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry.<ref name="highered.mcgraw-hill" /> [[Tennessee]] adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and [[Louisiana]] soon followed. Then [[Texas]] and [[Arkansas]] in 1911, [[Mississippi]] in 1917, [[North Carolina]] in 1923, [[Alabama]] and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] in 1927, and [[Virginia]] in 1930<!-- According to [[Racial Integrity Act of 1924]] article: That act is the most famous "racial integrity law," but the 1930 law is the one which introduced the "one drop" rule -->. During this same period, [[Florida]], [[Indiana]], [[Kentucky]], [[Maryland]], [[Missouri]], [[Nebraska]], [[North Dakota]], and [[Utah]] retained their old "blood fraction" statutes ''[[de jure]]'', but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to one-drop ''[[de facto]].''<ref>Pauli Murray, ed. ''States' Laws on Race and Color'' (Athens, 1997), 428, 173, 443, 37, 237, 330, 463, 22, 39, 358, 77, 150, 164, 207, 254, 263, 459.</ref>

Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as [[mulatto]], or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). But, in 1930, due to lobbying by southern legislators, the Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto. Documentation of the long social recognition of [[mixed-race]] people was lost, and they were classified only as black or white.

The binary world of the one-drop rule disregarded the self-identification both of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, and of people who were of mixed race and identified as American Indian. In addition, [[Walter Plecker]], Registrar of Statistics, ordered application of the 1924 Virginia law in such a way that vital records were changed or destroyed, family members were split on opposite sides of the color line, and there were losses of the documented continuity of people who identified as American Indian, as all people in Virginia had to be classified as white or black. Over the centuries, many Indian tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to "[[passing (racial identity)|pass]]" as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames from Indian to black.

Since the late 20th century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes and their members; the tribes are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage, and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures.

In the case of mixed-race [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|American Indian]] and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the "[[Pocahontas exception]]". Since many influential [[First Families of Virginia]] (FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian [[Pocahontas]] and her husband [[John Rolfe]] of the colonial era, the [[Virginia General Assembly]] declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent).

The [[Eugenics|eugenist]] [[Madison Grant]] of New York wrote in his book, ''[[The Passing of the Great Race]]'' (1916): "The cross between a white man and an [[Native Americans in the United States|Indian]] is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a [[Historical definitions of races in India|Hindu]] is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew."<ref>Madison Grant, ''The Passing of the Great Race'', 1916.</ref> As noted above, Native American tribes which had patrilineal descent and inheritance, such as the Omaha, classified children of white men and Native American women as white.