Naomi Drake

Who is Naomi Drake?

Naomi M. Drake was an American who became notable in mid-20th century Louisiana as the Registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for the City of New Orleans, where she imposed strict racial classifications on people under a binary system that recognized only "white" and "black" She unilaterally changed records to classify mixed-race individuals as black if she found they had any black ancestry, an application of hypodescent rules, and did not notify people of her actions.

In other cases, if people would not accept her racial classification, she refused to release the requested birth or death certificate. Her insistence on changing srecords to classify persons of any suspected African descent was similar to the racial zealotry demonstrated by Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, state registrar of Virginia's Vital Statistics, and a major lobbyist for its Racial Integrity Act of 1924.