4 The Hampton Roads Messenger Editorial


Virginia Native American History Includes African American History


mother, they were forced to declare the race of that child on the birth certificate as simply “colored.”


Plecker and other elite members of the white supremacists organization, the Anglo Saxon Clubs, campaigned for the Virginia Racial


Integrity


Act, which was passed by the state's General Assembly in 1924. The act recognized only two races, white and colored and required that a racial


Volume 9 Number 3


November 2014


BY ANGELA JONES


Although the fact that Native Americans


and Spaniards inhabited


America, before the English settlers arrived, has always been included as part of American history. Proof of this has been challenged, distorted, diluted, buried and even destroyed since 1607. According to the National Park Service, “When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607 and created the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, they did not encounter an uninhabited land. An estimated 50,000 Virginia Indians had called what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia home for more than 12,000 years."


We all remember reading about


Pocahontas and her father Powhatan; however, in the late 1900’s and early 20th century much of the history of Native Americans, the "Spanish" and African


Americans was threatened


with extinction. In Virginia, this history was destroyed in what has been called “documentation genocide.”


We have expressed our knowledge that people from Spain inhabited the land now called the United States before


the English settlers Conversely, many Americans


unaware that these “Spaniards” were actually Moors, originally from Africa, but they controlled Spain from 711 A.D until 1491. The Muslim Moors are not mentioned at all in the history books about the New World.


African people brought to America as slaves also lost their heritage and birthright because they were kidnapped from their native land and torn from their families to be sold to the highest bidder. They were given the last names of their masters and therefore robbed of ever being able to trace their true lineage; furthermore, there existed a diabolical plan carried out by people such as Virginia’s first registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, Walter


disenfranchise


Ashby Plecker, to further people of color by


refusing to allow them to register the birth of their children accurately (See Plecker's "hit-list" in his 1943 letter in the adjacent columns on this page).


Plecker settled in Hampton, Virginia in 1892 and held the position of registrar from 1912 until 1946. During that time he claimed there were only two races, white and colored; therefore, when a child was born to a Native American


arrived. are


description of every person be recorded at birth. It also made marriage between white persons and non-white persons a felony. This emboldened Plecker to go on a rampage altering birth certificates and marriage licenses without notifying the applicants. He even had what has been referred to as a “hit list” of names of possible offenders that he sent to officials throughout the state so that they could take on his cause of ensuring the purity of the white race by not allowing Native Americans or any mixed raced persons to proclaim being anything other than “colored.”


In 1925 Atha Sorrells, a pregnant woman of Native American and European heritage was denied a license to marry a white man. She challenged


the Virginia Racial


Integrity Act in court and won. According to documents obtained from the Library of Virginia, a judge determined that Sorrells had enough white blood to be determined white and not colored. This case deterred the actions of Plecker and other white supremacists because they feared the Virginia Racial Integrity Act would be struck down if they persisted.


Raleigh Pinn was a Native American who served as a militia man with the Amherst County Virginia Militia and in the Battle of Yorktown. He had assimilated


into white society


but maintained his Native American roots by forming two bands of mixed Cherokee


and Wiccocomico on


land he owned, one in Buckingham County and one at Buffalo Ridge in Amherst County.


Led by Samuel H. Penn, Sr, in


1991, the two tribes were named the United Cherokee Indian Tribe of Virginia, Incorporated. In 2000, Penn, Sr. and a delegation from the United Cherokee Indian Tribe of Virginia, Incorporated were honored at a U.S. Department of Interior's National Park Service celebration of Native Americans who fought at Yorktown. The Commonwealth of Virginia officially recognized, by Senate Joint Resolution Number 300 on February 1, 2013, the existence of the


Appalachian Because determination


of the and


Cherokee


Nation of Virginia and the United Cherokee Indian Tribe of Virginia, Incorporated.


hard dedication


work, of


Atha Sorrells and Raleigh Penn, today, Virginia’s Native Americans are recognized by both the state and federal government. Curious African Americans Native


are also tracing their American roots. Perhaps,


someday the role of the Moors in the forming the United States of America will be recognized, as well. The truth shall set you free America.


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