ABSTRACT
In 1982–83, Susie Guillory Phipps unsuccessfully sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records to change her racial classification from black to white. The descendant of an 18th-century white planter and a black slave, Phipps was designated “black” in her birth certificate in accordance with a 1970 state law which declared anyone with at least 1/32nd “Negro blood” to be black.
