Racism has been one of the longest and most prevalent issues within social and judicial circles in Virginia and the U.S as a whole. During the 1900s in Virginia, a major point of contention was the issue of inter-racial marriage. Men such as Walter Ashby Plecker, the head of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, continually made arguments against it using eugenical science to push for a ban on inter-racial marriage. This came to fruition in 1924, when the Racial Integrity Act was passed in Virginia, which banned people who “have no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian“ from marrying people who had even “one-drop” of non-white blood in them, with the exception of the Pocahontas clause, which allowed people to have no more than 1/16 American Indian ancestry and still be labelled as white. This law was later overturned in the famous Lovings vs. Virginia case in 1967, which legalized inter-racial marriage in Virginia. However, between 1926 and 1967 there were many cases of inter-racial marriages appearing in court, such as Cochran vs. Cochran in 1962.
Cochran vs. Cochran was a divorce trial revolving around plaintiff Charles Frederick Cochran and defendant Priscilla Leilani Bettencourt. Charles was born in Richmond and was in the U.S Army. He was stationed at many bases across the country during his service. One of the bases that he was deployed at was Schofield Barracks in Hawaii sometime around 1960, where he met Priscilla. Priscilla was a local woman to Hawaii, having lived there all her life in Hilo. They fell in love and were married on December 2nd, 1960 in her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii. The location of their marriage is important, as Charles was a white man and Priscilla was ‘oriental’. If they attempted to be married in Virginia, it would be an illegitimate marriage to the state as seen in the divorce trial of Naim vs. Naim, in which the supreme court dismissed, as in the eyes of the law, the marriage never happened due to Han being Chinese and Ruby being white.
Shortly after their marriage, Charles received a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) order from the army to return back to a Virginian army base. According to Charles, before their marriage Priscilla had agreed that when his next PCS order came, she would move with him, however when the time came Priscilla appeared to have changed her mind. She refused to leave Hawaii, and it took a lot of convincing from Charles for her to say that she would pack and follow Charles to his new base. Once Charles had returned home, he had heard from friends still stationed at Schofield Barracks that Priscilla had still not packed, so he returned to Hawaii for a trip to see what was going on. Once there, he found that she had changed her mind again, and had no intention to leave Hawaii. He returned from his trip on March 10th, 1961, and after writing one last letter to try and persuade her to come to Virginia with him, he declared separation on the 22nd of March, 1961.
The divorce trial began a year following the separation, on March 22nd, 1962, taking place in Hanover Circuit, VA under Justice Francis A. Taylor. Charles explained his situation to the court, alongside testimony from his mother Charles M. Cochran who backed up his story. Priscilla did not appear for the trial, and had no one representing her or testifying for her. At the end of the trial, Charles was granted an absolute divorce on the grounds of willful desertion. Willful desertion is the unjustified departure from the marital home with the intent not to return and without the consent of the other spouse for at least a year. Their marriage ended on March 22nd, 1962.
After their divorce, Charles had met a new bride, named Brenda Patrick Edgeworth. They would go on to get married on May 1st, 1964 in Richmond, VA. The following year, Brenda would give birth to their child Kelly Ruth Cochran on September 11th, 1965. As of Priscilla, little could be found beside her obituary, which shows that she died at 83 years old in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Works Cited
Lew, Benjamin. 2024. “A Less Than Perfect Union: Race, Gender, and the Lack of ‘Perfect Plaintiffs’ in Naim V. Naim.” Asian Pacific American Law Journal. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48797698.Snook, Caitlin. 2025.
“The Racial Integrity Act, 1924: An Attack on Indigenous Identity (U.S. National Park Service).” Www.Nps.Gov, February 14. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/racial-integrity-act.htm.Vertexlegal.Org. 2026.
“How to Prove Desertion for a Virginia Divorce – Vertex Legal.” October 18. https://vertexlegal.org/how-prove-desertion-virginia-divorce/.
Virginia Department of Health. n.d. Virginia, Marriages, 1936–2014. AncestryLibrary.
Virginia Divorce Records, 1918–2014. 1918. AncestryLibrary.