17 Facts About Walter Plecker

Walter Ashby Plecker was an American physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving from 1912 to 1946.

Walter Plecker was a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, a white supremacist organization founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922.

Walter Plecker was killed after being struck by a car in 1947.

Walter Plecker was a devout Presbyterian, and throughout his life, he supported the denomination's fundamentalist Southern branch, funding missionaries who believed, as he later would, that God had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment for racial intermixing.

Walter Plecker settled in Hampton, Virginia, in 1892, and before his mother's death in 1915, he worked with women of all races and became known for his active interest in obstetrics and public health issues.

Walter Plecker educated midwives, invented a home incubator, and prescribed home remedies for infants.

Walter Plecker became the public health officer for Elizabeth City County in 1902.

In 1912, Walter Plecker became the first registrar of Virginia's newly created Bureau of Vital Statistics, a position he held until 1946.

Walter Plecker wanted to prevent miscegenation, or marriage between races, and he thought that a decreasing number of mulattoes, as classified in the census, meant that more of them were passing as white.

In particular, Walter Plecker resented African Americans who passed as Native Americans, and he came to firmly believe that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" with its African American population.

Walter Plecker refused to recognize the fact that many mixed-race Virginia Indians had maintained their culture and identity as Native Americans over the centuries despite economic assimilation.

Walter Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify most citizens who claimed American Indian identity as "colored", although many Virginian Native Americans continued to live in their communities and maintained their tribal practices.

Specifically, Walter Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify certain families whom he identified by surname, because he decided that they were trying to pass and evade segregation.

Walter Plecker described Virginia's racial purity laws and requested to be put on Gross' mailing list.

Walter Plecker was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery beside his wife, who had died more than a decade earlier.

For years Walter Plecker never sought out friends, and he described his hobbies as "books and birds", and he gained a reputation for never smiling.

Walter Plecker's policies destroyed and altered records that individuals and families now need in order to prove their cultural continuity as Indians.