That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia |
Indiana University Press
2013
328 pages
12 b&w illustrations
6 x 9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-253-01043-8
Arica L. Coleman, Assistant Professor of Black American Studies
University of Delaware
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014
That the Blood Stay Pure traces the history and legacy of the commonwealth of Virginia’s effort to maintain racial purity and its impact on the relations between African Americans and Native Americans. Arica L. Coleman tells the story of Virginia’s racial purity campaign from the perspective of those who were disavowed or expelled from tribal communities due to their affiliation with people of African descent or because their physical attributes linked them to those of African ancestry. Coleman also explores the social consequences of the racial purity ethos for tribal communities that have refused to define Indian identity based on a denial of blackness. This rich interdisciplinary history, which includes contemporary case studies, addresses a neglected aspect of America’s long struggle with race and identity.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Author’s Note
- Introduction
- Part 1: Historicizing Black—Indian Relations in Virginia
- Prologue: Lingering at the Crossroads: African-Native American History and Kinship Lineage in Armstrong Archer’s A Compendium on Slavery
- 1. Notes on the State of Virginia: Jeffersonian Thought and the Rise of Racial Purity Ideology in the Eighteenth Century
- 2. Redefining Race and Identity: The Indian-Negro Confusion and the Changing State of Black-Indian Relations in the Nineteenth Century
- 3. Race Purity and the Law: The Racial Integrity Act and Policing Black/Indian Identity in the Twentieth Century
- 4. Denying Blackness: Anthropological Advocacy and the Remaking of the Virginia Indians (The Other Twentieth Century Project)
- Part 2: Black-Indian Relations in the Present State of Virginia
- 5. Beyond Black and White: Afro-Indian Identity in the case of Loving V. Virginia
- 6. The Racial Integrity Fight: Confrontations of Race and Identity In Charles City County, Virginia
- 7. Nottoway Indians, Afro-Indian Identity, and the Contemporary Dilemma of State Recognition
- Epilogue: Afro-Indian Peoples of Virginia: The Indelible Thread of Black and Red
- Appendix: Racial Integrity Act Text
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index