Waltera Plecker News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

SUMMARY Walter Ashby Plecker was a physician and the first Virginia state registrar of vital statistics, a position he served in from 1912 to 1946. He was a staunch promoter of eugenics, a discredited movement aimed at scientifically proving white racial superiority and thereby justifying the marginalizing of non-white people. Employing Virginia’s Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924), Plecker effectively separated Virginia citizens into two simplified racial categories: white and colored. The law, which remained in effect until 1967, when it was overturned by the United States Supreme Co...

Cook was born on the Pamunkey Reservation in King William County on October 23, 1860. His father, Major Cook, died in 1861, and his mother, Caroline Bradby Cook, raised him with the help of her father and brother. Members of the Colosse Baptist Church before the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Bradby and Cook families numbered among the many Pamunkey who formed Pamunkey Indian Baptist Church after the war. Cook’s mother brought him up as a member of the church, and, like most Pamunkey, the Cooks remained a devoutly religious family. In 1901 he was the first delegate from the church to...