The laws are still on the books in Virginia: Blacks and whites must sit in separate rail cars. They cannot use the same playgrounds, schools or mental hospitals. They can’t marry each other either.
The measures have not been enforced for decades, but they remain in the state’s official legal record. A state commission recommended that dozens of such discriminatory statutes finally be repealed, in some cases more than a century after they were adopted.
Although “some of these acts were rendered null and void by an amended Virginia Constitution, by landmark civil rights cases or legislation, it’s clear that they are vestiges of Virginia’s segregationist past that still sit on the books. ... We should not afford them the distinction of that official status,” said Chief Deputy Attorney General Cynthia Hudson, who led the panel of attorneys, judges, scholars and community leaders assigned to comb through the laws.
