Robert Wright, a free black, married Mary Godsey, a white woman, in 1806. In January 1815 she eloped with a white man, taking with her a slave and other property. Wright overtook the couple and persuaded his wife to return. That November, she fled with the same man to Tennessee. Wright petitioned for a divorce. The General Assembly rejected the petition because the marriage had never been legal.

In the Virginia Law to Preserve Racial Integrity, “white” persons were defined as those with “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian” or “one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian.” The second part of the definition was included to appease a group of prominent Virginians who claimed to be descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.

Every person living in Virginia had to register as either “white” or “colored.” This designation determined whom a person could marry and where he or she could attend school, among other things.

A.T. Shields, clerk of the Circuit Court of Rockbridge County, denied Atha Sorrells and Robert Painter a marriage license because of Sorrells’ Indian heritage. Sorrells and Painter brought action against Shields, and Judge Holt ruled in their favor, arguing that there was not “an appreciable amount of foreign blood” because Sorrells’s Indian ancestor had lived almost 130 years ago.

Atha Sorrells presented her family tree as evidence that she was white in her suit to obtain a license to marry Robert Painter.

In a letter to A.T. Shields, Plecker asserted that Judge Holt’s decision to categorize Atha Sorrells as white despite her Indian heritage had “emboldened” the Rockbridge tribe. Nonetheless, he advised against appealing the Sorrells case to the Supreme Court because the court might rule in her favor.

In another letter to A.T. Shields, Plecker inquired into the problem of the “free issue” people of Rockbridge and again alluded to the “unfortunate mistake made by Judge Holt in deciding that one of those families is of Indian blood and should be allowed to be considered as white.”

In his application for a marriage license, Charlie Sorrells indicated that both he and his fiancee, Sophia Jane Woods, were white. A.T. Shields, the same clerk of the court who denied Atha Sorrells’ right to marry, signed the license. The Sorrells’ name was later placed on a list of “mixed negroid” families living in Rockbridge, Virginia.

In a 1943 letter to local registrars, clerks, and legislators, Plecker asserted, “[T]here does not exist today a descendant of Virginia ancestors claiming to be an Indian who is unmixed with negro blood.”

Plecker circulated a list of surnames of “mixed negroid Virginia families striving to pass as ‘Indian’ or white” in each county.

In a letter to Turner McDowell, clerk of the Circuit Court in Botetourt County, Walter Plecker probed the legality of the marriage between Grace Mohler and Samuel Christian Branham. The court ruled that Branham was a “Negro” and ordered him “never again to live with” his wife. That Branham considered himself “white” made no difference to Plecker or the court.

In an application for a marriage license, one had to indicate not only that he or she was not “a habitual criminal, idiot, imbecile, hereditary epileptic or insane person,” but but also whether he or she was “white, colored, or mixed.”