A Note of Thanks

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Speaking of morals, you asked me what effect the female population of mixed blood was going to have on society here [in Charleston, South Carolina]. I have looked somewhat into the matter since my return, from what I can learn, I believe there is hardly a young man here of Southern birth, who can afford the expense, who does not protect one of these girls, and few married men who have not two families. Miscegenation is practiced here. I know of nearly a dozen cases where the parties are married. These girls are many of them beautiful, many almost pure white, with blue eyes and light hair, of fine figures and lady-like appearance. Many of them are much whiter than the majority of pure whites, who seem to belong to the order of women known as scraggy, and are the color of a liver colored pointer, having tan colored paws and faces. But few children are born where these girls are protected by single men, while some of the old men have larger colored families. Nothing can be done to rectify this evil, as these girls will not on any account marry a man with a drop of “nigger blood” in his veins.

“Life in the South,” Franklin Repository (via: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library), January 23, 1867, 2 (column 3). http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/news/fr1867/pa.fr.fr.1867.01.23.xml#02

A Note of Thanks

2013-01-17

Hi Steven,

This note is a grateful note: just wanted to say thanks for collating such broad, broad data on such a contested subject. Mixed-race is a tough one, hey? It’s wonderful that you made a site which brought all those opinions, past and present, onto a page which I can scroll down and read to my heart’s content (or heart’s discontent, at times, since often the experiences that are told on your site aren’t happy ones at all. But let’s hope for the future.)

I’m a person who identifies as mixed-race. My father is Cape Coloured and my mother was born in Australia to Dutch parents. They met here, in Melbourne.

Thank you for letting me hear the other voices out there; some I can relate to, some I can’t, but all of them make me grateful that we can, at least, have the conversation.

Kindest regards,

Emma Jacobus
Melbourne, Australia

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2013 at 23:28Z and is filed under Letters, Media Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

A Note of Thanks

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