{"id":20204,"date":"2012-01-29T02:42:57","date_gmt":"2012-01-29T02:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20204"},"modified":"2013-01-27T20:39:01","modified_gmt":"2013-01-27T20:39:01","slug":"miscegenation-and-the-free-negro-in-antebellum-anglo-alabama-a-reexamination-of-southern-race-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20204","title":{"rendered":"Miscegenation and the Free Negro in Antebellum &#8220;Anglo&#8221; Alabama: A Reexamination of Southern Race Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1890900\" target=\"_blank\">Miscegenation and the Free Negro in Antebellum &#8220;Anglo&#8221; Alabama: A Reexamination of Southern Race Relations<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/action\/showPublication?journalCode=jamericanhistory\" target=\"_blank\">The Journal of American History<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/i305450\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 68, Number 1<\/a> (June 1981)<br \/>\npages 16-34<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gary B. Mills<\/strong> (1944-2002), Associate Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>University of Alabama, Gadsden<\/em><\/p>\n<p>More than a quarter-century ago, the southern historian <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frank_Lawrence_Owsley\" target=\"_blank\">Frank L. Owsley<\/a> predicted: &#8220;If the history of every county, or even smaller community in every Southern State would be written from the basic sources, a history of the South would emerge vastly different from any previously written.&#8221; <strong>A new generation of historians has accepted this challenge, returning to those long-neglected basic sources.<\/strong> While their approach has been more topical than geographical (as Owsley suggested), the results have definitely called into question many of the standard interpretations of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_the_United_States_(1789%E2%80%931849)\" target=\"_blank\">antebellum<\/a> South.<\/p>\n<p>The southern free Negro\u2014and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=450\" target=\"_blank\">miscegenation<\/a> that is credited with producing him\u2014may serve as an excellent case at point. Traditional interpretations of his genesis and evolution generally have followed a monolithic pattern As a class, by and large, he owed his existence to libidinous, but conscience-stricken, white planters\u2014male planters, necessarily, since the unwritten double-standard of southern white society winked at white male exploitation of Negro women but tolerated no sexual relations that hinted of racial equality, such as white female relations with Negro males or legal interracial marriages Within free Negro society, allegedly, the family unit was unstable, due as much to the pattern of sexual incontinency that slavery forced upon blacks as to the desire of free black women to breed lighter offspring who might <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">pass<\/a> into white society. As a class, the free black is believed to have been a threat to the institution of slavery. Thus his contacts with slaves were limited, he was ostracized by white society (with the occasional exception of white immigrants and urban working-class whites), and he was all but legis lated out of existence.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/findingafricanamericanancestors.weebly.com\/uploads\/1\/1\/8\/8\/11883350\/mills_article_in_jah_june_1981.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Miscegenation and the Free Negro in Antebellum &#8220;Anglo&#8221; Alabama: A Reexamination of Southern Race Relations The Journal of American History Volume 68, Number 1 (June 1981) pages 16-34 Gary B. Mills (1944-2002), Associate Professor of History University of Alabama, Gadsden More than a quarter-century ago, the southern historian Frank L. Owsley predicted: &#8220;If the history [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,20],"tags":[1199,883,8853,6130,1304],"class_list":["post-20204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-alabama","tag-gary-b-mills","tag-gary-mills","tag-journal-of-american-history","tag-the-journal-of-american-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}