PRIMARY DOCUMENT

An act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes (October 1785)

CONTEXT

In “An act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes,” passed in October 1785, the General Assembly provides a legal definition of the word “mulatto.”

Author: General AssemblyTranscription Source: William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, (Philadelphia: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 12:184

FULL TEXT

CHAP. LXXVII.

An act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes.

 I. BE it enacted by the General Assembly, That every person of whose grandfathers or grandmothers any one is, or shall have been a negro, although all his other progenitors, except that descending from the negro, shall have been white persons, shall be deemed a mulatto; and so every person who shall have one-fourth part or more of negro blood, shall, in like manner, be deemed a mulatto.

 II. This act shall commence and be in force from and after the first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.

FURTHER READING

An act declaring who shall not bear office in this country (October 1705) General Provisions as to Slaves (1860) An Act to amend and re-enact the 9th section of chapter 103 of the Code of Virginia for 1860 (1866) An Act to amend and re-enact section 49 of the Code of Virginia, 1887 (1910) Colored Persons and Indians Defined (1924) Preservation of Racial Integrity (1924) Atha Sorrells v. A. T. Shields, Clerk, Petition for Mandamus (November 14, 1924) Letter from Walter A. Plecker to Turner McDowell (September 27, 1937) Surnames, by Counties and Cities, of Mixed Negroid Virginia Families Striving to Pass as “Indian” or White by Walter A. Plecker (ca. 1943) Letter from Walter A. Plecker to Local Registrars, et al. (December 1943)

CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
General Assembly. An act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes (October 1785). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/an-act-declaring-what-persons-shall-be-deemed-mulattoes-october-1785.
MLA Citation:
General Assembly. "An act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes (October 1785)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 31 May. 2023
Last updated: 2020, December 07
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