Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

In 1775, nineteen-year-old Charles Fitzgerald, naval officer, brother to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and third son of Emily, Duchess of Leinster, wrote to his mother with literary panache that ‘the jet black ladies of Africa’s burning sands have made me forget the unripened beauties of the north’. A few months later he followed this up with the news that she could look forward to ‘a copper coloured grandchild’ (Tillyard 1995:331).

Relations between Irish men and African women were as much a staple of the Caribbean experience as malaria, yellow fever, hurricanes, rum drinking and turtle soup, but it is an area of life which rarely appears on the written record. The earliest emigrant letters hint at this scheme of things. In 1675 John Blake, a merchant settler from Galway admitted to the veracity of his brother Henry’s accusation that he had brought a ‘whore’ from Ireland to Barbados along with his wife, but excused himself on the grounds of domestic necessity; his wife’s ‘weak constitution’ meant that she could not manage everything herself ‘for washing, starching, making of drink and keeping the house in good order is no small task to undergo here’. He could not dispense with the services of the prostitute until the African girl he had bought was properly trained in household matters (Oliver 1909-19, II: 55).

Nini Rogers, “The Irish in the Caribbean 1641-1837: An Overview,” Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, Volume 5, Number 3 (November 2007): 145-156.

Black Indians and Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916

Posted in Books, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Native Americans/First Nation, Religion, United States on 2022-01-20 02:27Z by Steven

Black Indians and Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916

University of Illinois Press
December 2021
256 pages
6 black & white photographs, 2 maps, 3 tables
6 x 9 in.
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-252-04421-2
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-08625-0

Christina Dickerson-Cousin, Assistant Professor of History
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut

The union of Native Americans and a black church institution

Often seen as ethnically monolithic, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in fact successfully pursued evangelism among diverse communities of indigenous peoples and Black Indians. Christina Dickerson-Cousin tells the little-known story of the AME Church’s work in Indian Territory, where African Methodists engaged with people from the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) and Black Indians with various ethnic backgrounds. These converts proved receptive to the historically black church due to its traditions of self-government and resistance to white hegemony, and its strong support of their interests. The ministers, guided by the vision of a racially and ethnically inclusive Methodist institution, believed their denomination the best option for the marginalized people. Dickerson-Cousin also argues that the religious opportunities opened up by the AME Church throughout the West provided another impetus for black migration.

Insightful and richly detailed, Black Indians and Freedmen illuminates how faith and empathy encouraged the unique interactions between two peoples.

Tags: African Methodist Episcopal Church, AME Church, Christina Dickerson-Cousin, University of Illinois Press

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Mixed Race Studies

Black Indians and Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916

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