{"id":24702,"date":"2013-04-05T04:30:40","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T04:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24702"},"modified":"2013-04-05T04:30:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T04:30:46","slug":"the-barber-of-natchez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24702","title":{"rendered":"The Barber of Natchez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Barber of Natchez<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

National Park Service<\/a>
\nNatchez: National Historical Park, Mississippi<\/a>
\n2012-07-19<\/p>\n

Timothy Van Cleave<\/strong>, Park Ranger
\nNatchez National Historical Park<\/em><\/p>\n

The Life of William Johnson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Known as the \u201cbarber\u201d of Natchez<\/a>, William Johnson<\/a> began his life as a slave. His freedom at age eleven followed that of his mother Amy and his sister Adelia. After working as an apprentice to his brother-in-law James Miller, Johnson bought the barber shop in 1830 for three hundred dollars and taught the trade to free black boys. It was shortly after he established a barber shop in downtown Natchez that he began to keep a diary. The diary was a mainstay in Johnson\u2019s life until his death in 1851.<\/p>\n

As a young prominent citizen in the free black community of Natchez, Johnson\u2019s interest in marriage and starting a family was strengthened by his thriving business. By 1835, his initial investment of three hundred dollars had grown to almost three thousand. His dress was impeccable and he was confident in his future. So confident that he caught the eye of twenty year old Ann Battles. Battles, also a free black married Johnson in 1835. Their eleventh child was born in 1851 at the time of Johnson\u2019s death…<\/p>\n

…In 1851 a boundary dispute with his neighbor Baylor Winn found the two men in court. Although, the judge ruled in Johnson\u2019s favor, Winn was not satisfied. Winn, also a free black ambushed Johnson returning from his farm and shot him. Johnson lived long enough to name Winn as the guilty party. Through strange circumstances, Winn was never convicted of the killing. Winn and his defense argued that he was actually white and not a free person of color because of his Indian ancestry in Virginia<\/a>. Therefore, the \u201cmulatto<\/a>\u201d boy who accompanied Johnson on that fateful day could not testify against Winn. Mississippi<\/a> law allowed for blacks to testify against whites in civil cases, but not in criminal cases. Two hung juries could not decide if he was white or black, so Johnson\u2019s killer walked free<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Barber of Natchez National Park Service Natchez: National Historical Park, Mississippi 2012-07-19 Timothy Van Cleave, Park Ranger Natchez National Historical Park The Life of William Johnson Known as the \u201cbarber\u201d of Natchez, William Johnson began his life as a slave. His freedom at age eleven followed that of his mother Amy and his sister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,1467,8,1459,3015,20],"tags":[11519,11516,8918,11518,11517],"class_list":["post-24702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-baylor-winn","tag-natchez","tag-national-park-service","tag-timothy-van-cleave","tag-william-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24702","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=24702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}