Mixed Race Studies

Nathan Crowell on Racial Identity: Gloucester County, Virginia, revisited

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
2013-01-14

Victoria E. Bynum, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

Some time ago, in response to my 10 November 2011 post, “Free People of Color in Old Virginia: The Morris Family of Gloucester County,”  (which I encourage you to read or reread) I received a long email message from Nathan Crowell, who traces his own mixed-heritage ancestry back to Gloucester County. Nathan shared not only his family research with me, but also certain insights that he gained over the years from listening to his ancestors—particularly his grandmother: insights into what it meant to be a “free person of color” in a slaveholding society, what it meant to be defined as “black” when one’s skin was fair. His remarks remind us that life in the Old South was far more complex than most of us realize, and that “race” was an imposed category of human existence that had no rational biological basis, but had very real legal, social, and psychological consequences that shaped the experiences and consciousness of all members of society.

With Nathan’s permission, I have created the following post from his remarks…

Read the entire article here.

Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861

University of North Carolina Press
March 2003
360 pages
6.125 x 9.25, 1 genealogical chart, 4 maps, notes, bibl., index
Paper ISBN  978-0-8078-5440-2

Joshua D. Rothman, Associate Professor of History
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Winner of the 2004 Outstanding Book Award, Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender.

Laws and cultural norms militated against interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War, and yet it was ubiquitous in cities, towns, and plantation communities throughout the state. In Notorious in the Neighborhood, Joshua Rothman examines the full spectrum of interracial sexual relationships under slavery—from Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the intertwined interracial families of Monticello and Charlottesville to commercial sex in Richmond, the routinized sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and adultery across the color line. He explores the complex considerations of legal and judicial authorities who handled cases involving illicit sex and describes how the customary toleration of sex across the color line both supported and undermined racism and slavery in the early national and antebellum South.

White Virginians allowed for an astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity within a seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations, Rothman argues, and the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting. As a consequence, even as whites never questioned their own racial supremacy, the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately of race itself always stood on unstable ground—a reality that whites understood and about which they demonstrated increasing anxiety as the nation’s sectional crisis intensified.

Oysters made Hampton man wealthy

Daily Press
Newport News, Virginia
2013-02-17

Mark St. John Erickson, Columnist

Even before the Civil War, Hampton’s busy waterfront boasted many free blacks who made their living as pilots, fishermen and boatmen.

Living side by side with whites who worked in the same maritime trades, they included such figures as Revolutionary War hero Cesar Tarrant, whose stand-out navigational skills and coolness under fire led the General Assembly to buy his freedom as a reward for “meritorious service.”

Tarrant was long dead when a light-skinned African-American boy named John Mallory Phillips came to Hampton in the 1860s. But the enterprise and independence he represented lived on in the tide of free blacks and ex-slaves who saw the opportunity to determine their own fates by taking to the water…

…Uncommon roots

Little was known about Phillips’ origins until his great-granddaughter Josephine C. Williams, a retired educator, began looking into her family’s past more than 15 years ago.

Scouring federal Census records, she found him listed first in 1860 as a 4-year-old child living in the York County household of a free black woman named Rachel Banks.

A decade later, Phillips shows up in the Hampton household of his uncle — a black oysterman named Cary Hopson — who owned his own home and reported several other oystermen from the Banks family living in his dwelling.

With his light skin and straight hair, Phillip’s appearance reflected the heritage of his father, a white York County farmer named John Phillips, and his light-skinned mother, whose mixed-race family reached far back into the colonial period, Williams says.

Whether Phillips was also related to white Hampton attorney, planter and Confederate officer Charles King Mallory — whose runaway slaves prompted Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler to give blacks refuge as “contraband of war” at nearby Fort Monroe — is debatable, she adds.

She also disputes the rumored link between the young freeman and Elizabeth City County planter Jefferson Curle Phillips, who commanded the local militiamen who burned Hampton in August 1861 to keep its buildings from being used by Union troops and the fast-growing population of fugitive slaves.

“I think it’s a coincidence,” Williams says, citing her Census documents as well as family lore.

“I don’t think there’s any relationship at all.”…

Read the entire article here.

Race Relations in Virginia & Miscegenation in the South, 1776-1860

University of Massachusetts Press
1970
362 pages
ISBN-10: 0870230506; ISBN-13: 978-0870230509

James Hugo Johnston (1891-1974), Professor of History
University of Virginia

Contents

• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• PART I. THE RELATION OF THE NEGRO TO THE WHITE MAN IN VIRGINIA
  • 1. Friendly Relations
  • 2. Violent Relations
  • 3. Free Negro Relations
• PART II. THE RELATION OF THE WHITE MAN TO THE NEGRO IN VIRGINIA
  • 4. The Humanitarians
  • 5. The Growth of Antislavery
  • 6. The Convention of 1829 and Nat Turner’s Insurrection
• PART III. MISCEGENATION
  • 7. The Intermixture of Races in the Colonial Period
  • 8. The Problem of Racial Identity
  • 9. The White Man and His Negro Relations
  • 10. The Status of the White Woman in the Slave States
  • 11. Indian Relations
  • 12. Mulatto Life in the Slave Period
• APPENDIX
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX

Harry L. Carrico, Virginia Supreme Court justice, dies at 96

The Washington Post
2013-01-28

Martin Weil

Harry L. Carrico, who sat for 42 years on the Virginia Supreme Court and wrote a decision on interracial marriage that was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in what was regarded as a civil rights milestone, died Sunday in Richmond. He was 96.

A family spokeswoman said his health had declined after a fall while on a cruise in December. He was a Richmond resident and died at the Virginia Commonwealth University medical center.

His tenure as a justice was among the longest in the history of the state. Even after he formally retired, he continued to hear cases as a senior judge and had been on the bench as recently as December…

…Justice Carrico’s best known opinion came in 1966. He wrote the ruling by which the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously upheld the state law against interracial marriage. The case became known as Loving v. Virginia and was named for the mixed-race couple, Richard and Mildred Jeter Loving.

The Lovings had married in Washington in June 1958 but soon returned to their native Caroline County, a rural area between Richmond and Fredericksburg. At the time, about two dozen states, including Virginia, prohibited interracial marriage.

The Caroline County sheriff burst into the Lovings’ home that July, roused the couple from their bed and told them the District’s marriage certificate was invalid in Virginia. The Lovings were subsequently charged and prosecuted…

Read the entire obituary here.

You Have No Right: Jane Webb’s Story

Out of the Box: Notes for the Archives @ Library of Virginia
Virginia Memory: Library of Virginia
2012-11-14

Greg Crawford, Local Records Coordinator

The colonial era Northampton County court records tell a fascinating story of a woman named Jane Webb. Born of a white mother, she was a free mulatto, formerly called Jane Williams. In 1704, Jane Webb had “a strong desire to intermarry with a certain negro slave … commonly called and known by the name of Left.” Webb informed Left’s owner Thomas Savage, a gentleman of Northampton County, of her desire to marry Left and made an offer to Savage. She would be a servant of Savage’s for seven years and would let Savage “have all the children that should be bornd [sic] upon her body during the time of [Jane’s] servitude,” but for how long the children were to be bound is not clear. In return, Savage would allow Jane Webb to marry his slave, and after Jane’s period of servitude ended, Savage would free Left. Also, neither Savage nor his heirs could claim any child born to Jane Webb and Left after her period of servitude. Savage agreed to Jane Webb’s offer, and an agreement was written and signed by both parties.

Jane Webb fulfilled her part of the agreement and served Savage for seven years. During that time, she had three children by her husband Left—Diana or Dinah Webb, Daniel Webb, and Francis Webb. After she completed her term of service in 1711, Jane Webb “in a kindly manner” demanded her husband from Savage as well as her children. Apparently, Jane Webb and Savage were at odds on how long the children she bore during her servitude were supposed to be bound to him, and Savage refused to free Left and the children. In April 1711, Savage submitted a letter to the county court of Northampton requesting that Jane Webb’s children be bound to him and his heirs, to which the court agreed…

Read the entire article here.

Circular Letter to “Local Registrars, Clerks, Legislators, and others responsible for, and interested in, the prevention of racial intermixture,” from Walter A. Plecker, State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Richmond

Commonwealth of Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics
Richmond, Virginia
December 1943

Source: Rockbridge County (Va.) Clerk’s Correspondence, 1912-1943. Local Government Records Collection, Rockbridge County Court Records. The Library of Virginia. 10-0878-003.

In a 1943 letter to local registrars, clerks, and legislators, Plecker asserted, “[T]here does not exist today a descendant of Virginia ancestors claiming to be an Indian who is unmixed with negro blood.”

To Local Registrars, Clerks, Legislators, and others responsible for, and interested in, the prevention of racial intermixture:

In our January 1943 annual letter to local registrars and clerks of courts, with list of mixed surnames, we called attention to the greatly increased effort and arrogant demands now being made for classification as whites, or at least for recognitions as Indians, as a preliminary step to admission into the white race by marraiage, of groups of the descendants of the “free negroes,” so designated before 1865 to distinguish them from slaves.

According to Mendel’s law of heredity, one out of four of a family of mixed breeds, through the introduction of illegitimate white blood, is now so near white in appearance as to lead him to proclaim himself as such and to demand admission into white schools, forbidden by the State Constitution.  The other three people of this type are applying for licenses to marry whites, or for white licenses when intermarrying amongst themselves.  These they frequently secure with ease when they apply in a county or city not the home of the woman and are met by clerk or deputy who justifies himself in accepting a casual affidavit as the truth and in issuing a license to any applicant regardless of the requirements of Section 5099a, Paragraph 4, of the Code.  This Section places the proof upon the applicants, not upon the clerks.  We have learned that affidavits cannot always be accepted as truth. This loose practice (to state it mildly) of a few clerks is now the greatest obstacle in the way of proper registration by race required of the State Registrar of Vital Statistics in that Section. Local registrars, who are supposed to know the people of their registration areas, of course, have no excuse for not catching false registration of births and deaths.

Public records in the office of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and in the State Library, indicate that there does not exist today a descendant of Virginia ancestors claiming to be an Indian who is unmixed with negro blood…

Read the entire letter here.

Life Stories, Local Places, and the Networks of Free Women of Color in Early North America

127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association
New Orleans, Louisiana
2013-01-03 through 2013-01-06

AHA Session 72
Friday, 2013-01-04: 08:30-10:00 CST (Local Time)
Preservation Hall, Studio 7 (New Orleans Marriott)

Chair: Daina Ramey Berry, University of Texas, Austin

Papers:

• “Life Stories, Local Knowledge, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century North America” / Terri L. Snyder, California State University, Fullerton
• “‘Refugee from St. Domingue Living in This City’: The Geography of Social Networks in Testaments of Refugee Free Women of Color in New Orleans” / Elizabeth Neidenbach, College of William and Mary
• “The Power of Priscilla’s Upper Room: Gender and the African American Public Sphere in the 1830s” / Sharon E. Wood, University of Nebraska, Omaha

Comment: Anthony S. Parent, Wake Forest University

The three papers included in this panel share several themes significant to new directions in the history of women of color in North America and the Caribbean.

First, all three papers are concerned with the importance of networks, and the relationship between networks and localities.  In these papers, networks sustain women’s claims to freedom, and networks are closely associated with places.  Terri Snyder finds, for example, that Jane Webb and her daughter Elisha strengthened their positions in 18th century courtrooms–rarely hospitable to women of color–by drawing on local knowledge to support their claims to justice.  For Elisha, her mother’s networks in Virginia eventually intervened to secure her freedom in New Hampshire.  Elizabeth Neidenbach’s research in the wills of refugees from St. Domingue uncovers women’s networks expressed in the streets and neighborhoods of New Orleans–networks that reach back to the island home left behind.  Not only did these networks help refugee women survive, they played a significant role in shaping the culture of the city.  Finally, Sharon Wood’s research underscores the importance of African American-controlled space to the emergence of a black public sphere.  Property in Illinois owned by Priscilla, a former slave, became the meeting place when leading white men of St. Louis sought to suppress African American organizing by shutting off their access to space.  

Finally, all three papers are concerned with methodologies of doing history and biography at the intersections of race and gender in early North America. Focusing on relatively ordinary women of color, each paper aims to recover the lives of particular women and integrate them into history. Until very recently, it has been a truism that the life stories of unlettered, enslaved, and free women of color of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries must remain unwritten because the sources to uncover their lives did not exist. Yet each of these papers, by imaginative use of primary sources and diligent linking of records across national, colonial, and state borders, challenges that claim, giving voice and flesh to women whose lives would otherwise remain fragmented among scattered documents.

This session addresses audiences interested in the histories of women, slavery and freedom, and geographical and biographical approaches to history.

Children of Empire: The Fate of Mixed-Race Individuals in British India, the Caribbean, and the Early American Republic

127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association
New Orleans, Louisiana
2013-01-03 through 2013-01-06

AHA Session 105: North American Conference on British Studies
Friday, 2013-01-04, 10:30-12:00 CST (Local Time)
Chamber Ballroom III (Roosevelt New Orleans)

Chair: Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook University

Papers

• “‘We Are an Indian People’: Mixed-Race Peoples on Virginia’s Eastern Shore” / Royce Gildersleeve, George Mason University
• “Global Citizens: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in the Caribbean, Britain, and India” / Daniel Livesay, Drury University
• “George Washington’s Anglo-Indian Relatives” / Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

Comment: Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook University

This session will examine the fate of mixed-race individuals in selected places in the English-speaking world from approximately 1775 through 1820. Royce Gildersleeve’s paper focuses on the Virginia government’s efforts to dispossess a group of Gingaskin Indians from their traditional lands on the Eastern Shore. Over time, intermarriage between free black people and the native population had altered the appearance of tribal members. By 1812, the Virginia government maintained that the community was no longer inhabited by Indians but by African Americans who did not deserve title to the land. Daniel Livesay investigates the stories of mixed-race individuals from Jamaica who moved first to Britain and then to British India in an effort to improve their social and economic status. Focusing on the story of three families of color, Livesay explores how British imperialism allowed mixed-race individuals to forge new identities in a new place, but also shows how the hardening of racial ideologies ultimately foreclosed some of the most promising avenues of advancement. Rosemarie Zagarri explores the effects of a migration that proceeded in the opposite direction. Thomas Law, a high-ranking British East India Company official, brought his three illegitimate children, born of an Indian concubine, first to England and then to the young United States. Law hoped that this move would allow his Eurasian children to escape India’s increasingly hostile environment for mixed-race children and secure his sons’ future in what he believed to be a land of unbounded opportunity. Kathleen Wilson, an eminent scholar of the “new” imperial history of Britain, is an ideal commentator for the session.

By focusing on a small group of individuals from a wide geographic expanse, scholars on this panel will directly address the 2013 convention theme, “Lives, Places, Stories.” By concentrating on mixed-race peoples, the panel will complicate our understanding of racial regimes that have been seen in terms of binary oppositions, such black and white, native American and white, Anglo and Indian. The panel will also provide an opportunity for the study of comparative imperialisms. Despite their common British origins, British India, the Caribbean, and the early American republic are seldom examined with reference to one another. Given the relatively flexible character of racial ideology in the mid-eighteenth century, mixed-race individuals from these places could often exploit the ambiguities of their descent to their own advantage. Yet in both British India and the early American republic, the rise of scientific forms of racial ideology in the early nineteenth century diminished their room to maneuver. White Europeans and Americans came to define “race” less in terms of a society’s degree of civilization and economic affluence and more in terms of its members’ skin color and physical characteristics. Nonetheless, the application of these ideas was highly contextual and differed from place to place. By juxtaposing the fate of individuals of mixed-race origins in a variety of English-speaking contexts, this panel will provide new insights into the development of racial identity and the ways in which different imperial regimes imposed shared racial ideologies.

For more information, click here.

Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?

The Aporetic
2012-09-27

Mike O’Malley

The ques­tion posed above is extremely hard to answer. She doesn’t “look like an indian.” But what do Indians look like?

Just to recap: Elizabeth Warren is run­ning for the Sen­ate in Massachusetts. She’s been widely mocked for claiming herself as “native Ameri­can” at var­i­ous points in her career. Warren grew up in what’s now Oklahoma, a vast region which the US government had originally reserved for Indian tribes relocated from the East…

…The racial past of Americans is far more complicated and ambiguous than Americans generally realize. My favorite example is very personal. According to Virginia, the state in which I now reside, I am a black man. Had my family stayed in VA, my father could not have attended white schools and my parents would not have been allowed to marry. It’s absurd, and ridiculous: I’m as white as any white man you’d ever imagine, and no one in my family even knew of this history till about a decade ago. But there it is, a mat­ter of record.

The man responsible, Walter Ashby Plecker, was convinced there were no “real” indians in VA. Instead, he argued, there lived a mongrel race of intermmarried people, the “WIN” tribe (White, Indian, Negro). If you listed yourself as “Indian” on official documents, Plecker would rewrite them, and change “indian” to “colored,” because there were no “real” indians. Had Warren grown up in VA, she would have been unable to prove any connec­tion to Indian ancestors, because Plecker destroyed the records. And yet, the descendants of Indians still live in Virginia today…

Read the entire article here.