The Archival Gap

When the state uses a pen to erase a lineage.

In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, a law designed to destroy Indigenous and African American identities on paper. This initiative was led by eugenicist Walter Plecker (B-D Dates), this “Paper Genocide” systematically scratched out ancestral names from official birth and marriage records. connection to place (work, family, records document place sense of belonging and place)

Visual slider block will allow sliding between a blank 1924 registration form and a document where “Indian” is handwritten as “colored”.