Historic Virginia Documents

This constitution established a poll tax and other rules intended to prevent African Americans from voting. It also established a new regulatory agency, the State Corporation Commission.

This act required Virginians to register their race with the state, expanded prohibitions on interracial marriage, and classified all non-white people as "colored," effectively denying the existence of Indigenous Virginians.

This U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld Virginia's eugenics program, which permitted forced sterilization of people in state institutions.

Federal decision upholding segregated public education in Virginia. The ruling was appealed and became part of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.

U.S. Supreme Court decision that determined Virginia's poll tax to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Supreme Court of Virginia decision upholding Virginia's interracial marriage ban, subsequently overturned by Loving v. Virginia.

U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Virginia's ban on interracial marriage.

This constitution incorporated changes mandated by federal civil rights law, such as the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act.

U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the male-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute, a public military college.

U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that people with intellectual disabilities may not receive the death penalty.