FREE BLACKS IN THE 1800’S
“As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom. The most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper — the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.” – , 1901
A BACKGROUNDER
By the early 1800′s, most Northern states had taken steps to end slavery. Some Northern legislatures have already adopted laws which provided for the immediate or gradual end of slavery by this time. Free blacks in the 1800’s were quite outspoken in the injustices being done to them. However, the extent of how they express themselves is determined by whether they reside in the North or the South. Free Northern Blacks are more able to travel and assemble freely than those who were in the South. It was more difficult for the Southern Blacks to organize and sustain groups which would promote their rights. But the year 1973 when invented the cotton gin machine proved good for the blacks in the South, as their contributions to society became recognized.
The Revolutionary War in the late 1700’s led to the emancipation of black people, in accordance to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Emancipation Proclamation is a presidential decree of Abraham Lincoln on 1863 which freed most of the slaves in the United States during that time. It was through the war powers vested to the President by the Constitution, and not by a law passed by Congress, that the said proclamation pushed through. The liberation was permanently put to effect by the Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in December 1865, and which abolished slavery and prohibited involuntary servitude. One well-known patriot of the time is , a runaway African American slave who lived from 1723 to 1770. He was one of the five people who were killed in the Boston Massacre, is often depicted as a hero of the blacks of his era. On July 2, 1777, Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.
“In 1830, there were 6,152 free Negroes in the District of Columbia compared with 6,152 slaves; in 1840, 8,361 compared with 4,694 slaves; and in 1860, 11,131 compared with only 3,185. Thus is 30 years, the free colored population was nearly doubled, while the slave population was halved. The free Negroes were of several classes: Those whose antecedents had never been slaves, such as descendents of indentured servants; those born of free parent, or of free mothers; those manumitted; those who had bought their own freedom, or whose kinsmen had bought it for them; and those who were successful runaways” (, 1937, . P71-2).
After slavery was abolished in the United States, many of the freed blacks went to work in textile and tobacco factories, iron mills and other industrial enterprises (, 1991). But there still were discriminations, as whites were given the priority in the distribution of work capacities over black laborers. This is in view of the economic biases. The following delves deeper into the restrictions to free blacks in the economic, political and social aspects. The Black Codes and laws were laws passed in the United States during the era of black race oppression, denying the blacks of their civil rights.
ECONOMIC RESTRICTIONS
Laws providing economic limitations to blacks were passed in the North to discourage black immigration to the north central states. In addition to this, Northern free blacks are also in the constant fear that they would be kidnapped to be transported in the South where there is a growing demand for slaves in the cotton-industry. There was general fear in the hearts of the leaders of the Northern states that the free blacks would become completely dependent to the government and become a source of disorder after the abolition of slavery. In the assumption that blacks are incapable of supporting themselves, the local administration of Massachusetts passed a vagrancy law which required the expulsion of all African Americans who were not citizens of the state out of Massachusetts.[1] Economic discriminations in the North confined free blacks to menial labors.
(1986) pointed out that the compensation system of associated with sharecropping and share tenantry immobilized plantation workers for most of the crop year, which was why it was wrong to describe black labor in the postbellum South as free. In fact, the Mississippi Black Code requires blacks to make annual contracts in writing, to state that if they run away from their tasks, they would not be able to get their wage for that period of year. Informants to these runaways would be rewarded five dollars a head plus mileage. On farms, labor would start at sunrise and end at sunset everyday, except Sundays. If they were to absent from work due to illness, costs of food and nursing would be deducted from their wages.[2] Industrialization did nothing to improve the plight of the free blacks, as nonagricultural jobs were given exclusively to whites. “The southern industrial workplace was highly segregated and the lines of segregation were remarkably persistent through good times and bad” (, 1986). One other important facet of economic restriction in both the North and the South is the lower income average of the blacks against those received by the whites for the same capacity.
POLITICAL RESTRICTIONS
The Fifteenth Amendment to the American Constitution basically gives every registered voter in the country the right to vote, regardless of race. The purpose of this amendment though, which was to give former slaves their basic democratic right, was not fully achieved until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These following historical facts are proof that in the 1800’s, there were still laws that curbed the political freedom of the free blacks. A bird’s eye-view of the book ‘The Black Laws of the Old Northwest’ (1993) would provide that none of the states Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin (collectively referred to as the Old Northwest) allowed blacks to serve on juries for white defendants and that none of them allowed free blacks to vote. Indiana and Illinois openly made black migration illegal during the 1850’s. An Ohio statute passed in 1859 proclaimed that any election judge who allowed someone with a “visible admixture of African blood” to vote was to be fined 0-0 and jailed for 1-6 months, which showed discrimination in the blacks’ right to vote. Also in the same state, legislations in 1802 denied black residents the right to become public officials and to testify against a white person in court. In 1803, blacks in Ohio were barred from service in the state militia. These legislations were not repealed until 1849.[3]
In the South, there was the problem of the states on what methods to use that would allow whites to vote, at the same time deprive free blacks of this right. At the end of the Reconstruction in 1887, federal troops in the South were no longer present to protect the rights of the black citizens, and there was a noticeable decline in the black voting statistics, as white employers and the Ku Klux Clan threatened free blacks if they dared participate in the polls. Since the Fifteenth Amendment prevents anti-blacks from fully excluding black citizens from voting, they devised measures that made it difficult for free blacks to vote. In a convention in Mississippi held for that purpose, the white leaders included in the revised state constitution the annual payment of a poll tax two years before the elections. Since the Mississippian blacks constitute the poorest part of the state’s population, they were not able to afford it and consequently, were not able to vote. Another clause in the revised constitution provided for a literacy test before exercising one’s right to vote. It required anyone who wanted to vote to read a part of the Mississippi constitution, and explain it to the electoral registration clerk, who is always white, and who determines if the voter is literate or not. There was another clause which proved effective and which was later copied by all the other states in the South that further decreased the percentage of black voters. The “grandfather clause”, which only allowed the registration of people whose grandfather was qualified to vote before the Civil War, effectively lessened the number of blacks who were allowed to vote, because obviously, this only applied to white citizens. When all else fails to stop the blacks from trying to vote, intimidation would be the last and cruelest resort. The whites would bully the blacks in the voting precincts, or as their employers threaten to put the blacks out of work.
SOCIAL RESTRICTIONS
laws, as enumerated on a U.S. National Park Service website[4], contain discriminatory laws socially segregating people according to race and ethnicity. The state of Alabama, for example, has a law requiring a separate waiting area and ticket area in bus stations, and restaurants in the said state could allow both white and colored people in the same room only if it has a solid partition seven feet or higher, and if there is a separate entrance and exit for both races. Intermarriage in Florida was prohibited in effect of a racist law. It was alos in this state where education should be conducted separately for the black people and the white ones. In Virginia, the conductors of railroads are required to assign seats to people according to their race, thereby providing a different coach for the whites and another one for the colored people. In Mississippi prisons, a warden is required to see to it that the white convicts shall have a different apartment from those of the black prisoners. It was also in the same city where blacks were prohibited to rent a property in the towns or cities. The old Northwest states banned black immigration outright or imposed heavy bonds to ensure “good conduct” from blacks wanting to enter their regions.[5] Other social restrictions required a black migrant to Ohio to post a 0 bond of solvency, raised the fines of employers for hiring a black person without proof of free status or for harboring a fugitive to 0, and offered a fifty-dollar reward for informers.[6] Shortly after the period of Reconstruction, Southern legislators took segregation to the extreme. “A 1914 Louisiana statute required separate entrances at circuses for blacks and whites; a 1915 Oklahoma law segregated telephone booths; a 1920 Mississippi law made it a crime to advocate or publish “arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and Negroes.” Arkansas provided for segregation at race tracks. Texas prohibited integrated boxing matches. Kentucky not only required separate schools, but also provided that no textbook issued to a black would “ever be reissued or redistributed to a white school child” or vice versa. Similarly, Florida required that school books for blacks be stored separately from those for whites. Alabama prohibited blacks and whites from playing checkers together. All Southern states prohibited interracial marriages. Segregation touched the sacred and the profane. Georgia prohibited black ministers from performing a marriage ceremony for white couples; New Orleans created segregated red light districts for white and black prostitutes” (, 2006).
EMIGRATION FROM AMERICA AS A RESPONSE TO OPPRESSION
A response to the oppression on economic, political and social lives of the free blacks is emigration. Although there were evidences of the end of slavery during the period after the War of Independence, free blacks soon realized that it does not also mean equality for them. As observed by (2000), “The post-Revolutionary interest in colonization and emigration among blacks was connected to the growing social and political consciousness among sections of the African American population.”
“In the early nineteenth century, black community leaders were divided over two alternative approaches to challenging racism and eradicating slavery. One approach was militant, the other moderate. Some supported the more confrontational and aggressive methods advocated by and others. This voice called for an immediate end to slavery through any means necessary including aggressive tactics, dissolution of the federal union, and even the violence of slave uprisings. Some others advocated emigration, believing blacks would never be at home in America” (, 1997). This wave of emigration in the late 1770’s particularly in the 1773 through 1854 brought the black people to Haiti. The American Colonization Society (ACS) formed in 1817 sent African Americans to Africa as alternative to emancipation in the United States. Emigration to the West African colony of Liberia was also much discussed in the 18th century.
This blacks’ support of the idea that emigration is an answer to stop oppression is a truly noble and non-violent way of rising up against racism. Leaving a place where one is clearly not wanted, even if one wants so much to stay, is a great sacrifice for the black race in America. In the words of , “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war.” There will never be true peace for the free blacks, unless they are vested freedom, in every sense of the word.
REFERENCE
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