Racial integrity or 'race suicide': Virginia's eugenic movement, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the work of Walter A. Plecker

Moten examines Virginia's eugenic movement by focusing on the 1924 racial integrity law. The locus of the investigation largely centers on the writings of Walter A. Plecker, as Moten explores ways in which the category "white" was constituted by Plecker so that it represented all that was morally good, healthy and culturally advanced. He also discusses W. E. B. DuBois' notion of race, which is a possible reaction to and against racial biological conclusions about black inferiority.