Seven female field researchers worked on a 1926 study called “Mongrel Virginians,” which McRae describes as concluding that interracial relationships “had rendered a portion of the population less intelligent, less restrained, less industrious, and less moral than their ‘purer’ white or black neighbors.” The findings were used to justify segregation and violence under the auspices of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (RIA), which prohibited race mixing and classified only people with no trace of non-European blood as white. Women helped enforce the RIA over the next forty years. Their work as
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