Free Blacks

Abolitionism

Most organized political and social movements to end slavery did not begin until the mid-18th century. The sentiments of the American Revolution and the equality evoked by the Declaration of Independence rallied many black Americans toward the revolutionary cause and their own hopes of emancipation; both enslaved and free black men fought in the Revolution on both sides. In the North, slaves ran away from their owners in the confusion of war, while in the South, some slaves declared themselves free and abandoned their slave work to join the British.

After the revolution

In the 1770s, Black people throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom; by 1800, all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually reduce it. While free, black people often had to struggle with reduced civil rights, such as restrictions on voting, as well as racism, segregation, or physical violence. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent, and when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791 it was the first state to have done so. All the other Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780, and several other Northern states adopted gradual emancipation. In 1804, New Jersey became the last original Northern state to embark on gradual emancipation. Slavery was prohibited in the federal Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The free black population increased from 8% to 13.5% from 1790 to 1810; most of whom lived in the Mid-Atlantic States, New England, and the Upper South, where most of the slave population lived at the time.

The rights of free blacks fluctuated and waned with the gradual rise in power among poor white men during the late 1820s and early 1830s. The National Negro Convention movement began in 1830, with black men holding regular meetings to discuss the future of the black "race" in America; some women such as Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth made their voices heard through public lecturing. The National Negro Convention encouraged a boycott of slave-produced goods. These efforts were met with resistance, however, as the early 19th century brought renewed anti-black sentiment after the spirit of the Revolution began to die down.

During the 1787 Philadelphia Convention which produced the United States Constitution, a compromise was proposed between northern states which only wanted to count free blacks in congressional apportionment (ignoring slave populations), and slave states which wanted full counting of the slave population. The compromise counted slave populations on the ratio of three-fifths, while free blacks were not subject to the compromise and counted as one full citizen for representation. Due to this compromise Southern states could count three-fifths of their slave populations toward the state populations for purposes of congressional apportionment and the electoral college. This additional counting of the slave population resulted in those states having political power in excess of the white voting population. The South dominated the national government and the presidency for years. Congress adopted legislation that favored slaveholders, such as permitting slavery in territories as the nation began to expand to the West. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, part of the Compromise of 1850, requiring even the governments and residents of free states to enforce the capture and return of fugitive slaves. Famous fugitives such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth gained the support of white abolitionists to purchase their freedom, to avoid being captured and returned to the South and slavery. In 1857, the ruling of Dred Scott v. Sandford effectively denied citizenship to black people of any status.

Black codes

Southern states also passed harsh laws regulating the conduct of free blacks, in several cases banning them from entering or settling in the state. In Mississippi, a free Negro could be sold into slavery after spending ten days in state. Arkansas passed a law in 1859 that would have enslaved every free black person still present by 1860; although it was not enforced, it succeeded in reducing Arkansas's population of free blacks to below that of any other slave state. A number of Northern states also restricted the migration of free blacks, with the result that emancipated blacks had difficulty finding places to legally settle.

Abolitionism

The abolitionist cause attracted interracial support in the North during the antebellum years. Under President Abraham Lincoln, Congress passed several laws to aid blacks to gain a semblance of freedom during the American Civil War; the Confiscation Act of 1861 allowed fugitive slaves who escaped to behind Union lines to remain free, as the military declared them part of "contraband" from the war and refused to return them to slaveholders; the Confiscation Act of 1862 guaranteed both fugitive slaves and their families everlasting freedom, and the Militia Act allowed black men to enroll in military service.

In January 1863, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in Confederate-held territory only. Black men were officially admitted to serve in the Union Army and the United States Colored Troops were organized. Black participation in fighting proved essential to Union victory.

After the Civil War

In 1865, the Union won the Civil War, and states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery (except as punishment for a crime) throughout the entire country. The Southern states initially enacted Black Codes in an attempt to maintain control over black labor. The Mississippi Black Code (the first to pass and the best known) distinguished between "free negroes" (referring to those who had been free before the war, in some places called "Old Issues"), (newly free) "freedmen", and "mulattoes" — though placing similar restrictions on freedom for all. US-born blacks gained legal citizenship with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, followed by the Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship Clause.

Regional differences

Migration to cities

The lives of free blacks varied depending on their location within the United States. There was a significant free-black bias towards cities, as many rural free blacks migrated to cities over time, both in the North and the South. Cities were the chief destinations for migrating free blacks in the South, as cities gave free blacks a wider range of economic and social opportunities. Most southern cities had independently black-run churches as well as secret schools for educational advancement. Northern cities also gave blacks better opportunities. For example, free Negroes who lived in Boston generally had more access to formal education.

In the South

Before the American Revolution, there were very few free blacks in the Southern colonies. The Lower South, except for its cities, did not attract many free blacks. The number of urban free Negroes grew faster than the total free black population, and this growth largely came from a mass migration of rural free Negroes moving to cities, such as Richmond and Petersburg of Virginia, Raleigh and Wilmington of North Carolina, Charleston of South Carolina, and Savannah (and later Atlanta) of Georgia. The South overall developed two distinct groups of free Negroes. Those in the Upper South were more numerous: the 1860 census showed only 144 free Negroes in Arkansas, 773 in Mississippi, and 932 in Florida, while in Maryland there were 83,942; in Virginia, 58,042; in North Carolina, 30,463; and in Louisiana, 18,647. Free blacks in the Lower South were more urban, educated, wealthier, and were generally of mixed race with white fathers, compared to free blacks in the Upper South. Despite these differences, the Southern states passed similar laws to regulate black life, borrowing from one another.

Legislation against free Black people

The above numbers reflect a deliberate attempt to expel free Negroes from the deep South. "Southerners came to believe that the only successful means of removing the threat of free Negroes was to expel them from the southern states or to change their status from free persons to ... slaves." Free Negroes were perceived as "an evil of no ordinary magnitude," undermining the system of slavery. Slaves had to be shown that there was no advantage in being free; thus, free Negroes became victims of the slaveholders' fears. The legislation became more forceful; the free Negro had to accept his new role or leave the state. In Florida, for example, the legislation of 1827 and 1828 prohibited them from joining public gatherings and "giving seditious speeches", and laws of 1825, 1828, and 1833 ended their right to carry firearms. They were barred from jury service and from testifying against whites. To manumit (free) a slave, a master had to pay a tax of $200 each and had to post a bond guaranteeing that the free Negro would leave the state within 30 days. Eventually, some citizens of Leon County, Florida's most populous and wealthiest county (this wealth was due to the higher number of slaves in Leon County than any other county in Florida, who in the 1860 census constituted 73% of its population), petitioned the General Assembly to have all free Negroes removed from the state.

In Florida, legislation passed in 1847 required all free Negroes to have a white person as a legal guardian; in 1855, an act was passed which prevented free Negroes from entering the state. "In 1861, an act was passed requiring all free Negroes in Florida to register with the judge of probate in whose county they resided. The Negro, when registering, had to give his name, age, color, sex, and occupation and had to pay one dollar to register ... All Negroes over twelve years of age had to have a guardian approved by the probate judge ... The guardian could be sued for any crime committed by the Negro; the Negro could not be sued. Under the new law, any free Negro or mulatto who did not register with the nearest probate judge was classified as a slave and became the lawful property of any white person who claimed possession."

Free blacks were ordered to leave Arkansas as of January 1, 1860, or they would be enslaved. Most left.

Migration from South to North

Even with the presence of significant free black populations in the South, free blacks often migrated to Northern states. While this presented some problems, free blacks found more opportunities in the North overall. During the nineteenth century, the number and proportion of population of free blacks in the South shrank as a significant portion of the free black population migrated northward. Some of the more prominent and talented free black figures moved to the North for its opportunities, draining the South of potential free black leaders. Some returned after the Civil War to participate in the Reconstruction Era, establishing businesses and being elected to political office. This difference in the distribution of free blacks persisted until the Civil War, at which time about 250,000 free blacks lived in the South.

Migration via the frontier

Free black people in the eastern United States became prominent before the solidification of chattel slavery in Virginia. According to genealogical records, some of the first ancestors of later communities categorized as free people of color in the eastern United States were free black people in Tidewater Virginia, such as Emanuel Driggus, John Graweere, Anthony Johnson, Gabriel Jacobs, and Emmanuel Cumbo (Cambow).

Free African-American communities formed around those who were able to obtain land grants on the edge of the expanding frontier, moving from Southampton County to Granville, to the interior of South Carolina, and later to Tennessee and Louisiana. Reports indicate attitudes towards these communities were kinder on the frontier, due to the need to rely on neighbors, low slave populations, and high land ownership by the free black community equalizing their status with white frontiersmen. In frontier counties such as Halifax, Edgecombe, and Granville, citizens would petition the government to repeal the specific taxes on free black people. Many of them would serve in the Revolutionary War, funding more land purchases. They would continuously emigrate and clear new lands due to persecution by newly settled whites, following the expanding frontier to maintain their place in society.

Free Black settlements

Free black people founded settlements on the frontier, such as Carthagena. Some of these settlements became used by the Underground Railroad, such as "Poke Patch" in Ohio. According to historical archives, these settlements operated as hubs for abolitionists and runaway slaves. A group of freed slaves known as the Randolph Freedpeople founded two settlements in Ohio, Rumley and Rossville, as well as Israel Hill in Virginia.

Some other notable free Black settlements on the frontier were Free Hill, Pocahontas Island, Pee Pee, and Chubbtown.

Population isolates

Some lighter-skinned descendants of free Black people formed distinct communities later on, such as the Melungeons, Brass Ankles, Lumbee, Redbones, and Carmelites. Some of them sought separate schools from freedmen during the Jim Crow Era. The "old issue negroes" of Person County were able to obtain separate schools, while others, such as the Melungeons and Louisiana Redbones, were sometimes able to attend white schools. Over time, some of them began to pass as white. Scholar Renate Bartl concludes a subset of free Black people adopted an "Indian" identity to avoid classification as Black or "colored". She stated that of the free Black origin isolates with no documented tribal ancestry, most possessed no past tribal descent or identity, instead adopting an identity later on. Bartl adds that in some cases, educated members of a community will design history and traditions for their group to obscure African-American descent.

Opportunities for advancement

Free black people drew up petitions and joined the army during the American Revolution, motivated by the common hope of freedom. This hope was bolstered by the 1775 proclamation by British official Lord Dunmore, who promised freedom to any slave who fought on the side of the British during the war. Black people also fought on the American side, hoping to gain benefits of citizenship later on.

The economic, military, and scientific superiority of the elite class justified slavery through interpretation of their status as a matter of divine providence; black people were thus perceived as members of an inferior race, as God had seemingly allowed the elite class to exploit the slave trade without any hint that he might be planning any sort of divine retribution. In fact, the very opposite had happened and slaveholders were seemingly rewarded with great material wealth. The judiciary confirmed this subordinate status even when explicitly racialized laws were not in place. A South Carolina judge editorialized in an 1832 case:

Free negroes belong to a degraded caste of society; they are in no respect on an equality with a white man. According to their condition they ought by law to be compelled to demean themselves as inferiors, from whom submission and respect to the whites, in all their intercourse in society, is demanded; I have always thought and while on the circuit ruled that words of impertinence and insolence addressed by a free negro to a white man, would justify an assault and battery.

Employment

Free black people could not enter many professional occupations, such as medicine and law, because they were barred from the necessary education. This was also true of occupations that required firearm possession, elective office, or a liquor license. Many of these careers also required large capital investments that most free black people could not afford. Exceptions to these limitations existed, as with physicians Sarah Parker Remond and Martin Delany in Louisville, Kentucky.

Free black males enjoyed wider employment opportunities than free black females, who were largely confined to domestic occupations. While free black boys could become apprentices to carpenters, coopers, barbers, and blacksmiths, girls' options were much more limited, confined to domestic work such as being cooks, cleaning women, seamstresses, and child-nurturers. Despite this, in certain areas, free black women could become prominent members of the free black community, running households and constituting a significant portion of the free black paid labor force. One of the most highly skilled professions for a woman was teaching.

Education

The 1830s saw a significant effort by white communities to oppose black people's education, coinciding with the emergence of public schooling in northern American society. Public schooling and citizenship were linked together, and because of the ambiguity that surrounded black citizenship status, blacks were effectively excluded from public access to universal education. Paradoxically, the free black community of Baltimore in the antebellum years made more significant strides in increasing black access to education than did Boston and New Haven. Most southern states had no public education systems until these were established during Reconstruction by the new biracial legislatures. Educated free black people created literary societies in the North, making libraries available to blacks in a time when books were costly but dues or subscription fees were required for membership.

Many free African American families in colonial North Carolina and Virginia became landowners and some also became slave owners. In some cases, they purchased members of their own families to protect them until they could set them free. In other cases, they participated in the full slave economy. For example, a freedman named Cyprian Ricard purchased an estate in Louisiana that included 100 slaves.

Civil War

During the Civil War, free blacks fought on both the Confederate and Union sides. Southern free black people who fought on the Confederate side were hoping to gain a greater degree of tolerance and acceptance among their white neighbors. The hope of equality through the military was realized over time, such as with the equalization of pay for black and white soldiers a month before the end of the Civil War.

Women

Within free black marriages, many women were able to participate more equally in their relationships than elite white women. This potential for equality in marriage can be seen through the example of the "colored aristocracy" of the small black elite in St. Louis, where women were often economic partners in their marriages. These small groups of blacks were generally descended from French and Spanish mixed marriages. Under the French, the women in these marriages had the same rights as white women and could hold property. These black women hoped to remain financially independent both for themselves and for the sake of protecting their children from Missouri's restrictive laws. This level of black female agency also made female-centered households attractive to widows. The traditional idea of husband dominating wife could not be the central idea in these elite marriages because of women's importance in bringing income into the family. Women had to exercise caution in married relationships, however, as marrying a black man who was still a slave would make the free black woman legally responsible for his behavior, good or bad.

Legal cases

There are multiple examples of free black women exerting agency within society, and many of these examples include exerting legal power. Slavery and freedom coexisted with an uncertainty that was dangerous for free blacks. From 1832 to 1837, the story of Margaret Morgan and her family presents a prime example of the danger to free blacks from the ambiguous legal definitions of their status. The Morgan family's legal entanglement led to the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, in which it was decided that their captors could supersede Pennsylvania's personal liberty law and claim ownership of the Morgans. This case highlighted the constitutional ambiguity of black rights while also illustrating the active effort by some in the white community to limit those rights.

In New England, slave women went to court to gain their freedom while free black women went to court to hold on to theirs; the New England legal system was unique in its accessibility to free blacks and the availability of attorneys. Women's freedom suits were often based on technicalities, such as the lack of legal slave documents or mixed-race ancestry that exempted some from slave service. In New England in 1716, Joan Jackson became the first slave woman to win her freedom in a New England court.

Elizabeth Freeman brought the first legal test of the constitutionality of slavery in Massachusetts after the American Revolution, asserting that the state's new constitution and its assertions of men's equality under the law meant that slavery could not exist. As a landowner and taxpayer, she is considered to be one of the most famous black women of the revolutionary era. Coverture limited the ability of some free black women to file lawsuits on their own, but a few women still filed jointly with their husbands.

Notable free persons

Born prior to 1800

• Richard Allen: founder of African Methodist Episcopal Church, first independent black denomination in the US, co-founder of the Free African Society
• Reytory Angola: first black person to petition a legislature as an individual
• Benjamin Banneker: almanac author, astronomer, surveyor, naturalist and farmer.
• John Chavis: first African American known to attend college in the U.S.
• James Derham: first African American to formally practice medicine in the United States
• Emanuel Driggus: one of the first free First Africans in Virginia
• Henry Evans (preacher): Methodist preacher and cobbler
• Elizabeth Freeman: healer, midwife and nurse who sued for her freedom in 1781
• Prince Hall: noted abolitionist for his leadership in the free black community in Boston, and as the founder of Prince Hall Freemasonry
• Jeanette Forchet: one of the first to be freed in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1700s
• John Graweere: one of the first free First Africans in Virginia
• Thomas L. Jennings: first black man granted a U.S. patent
• Anthony Johnson (colonist): former slave who became a slave owner
• Absalom Jones: first ordained black Episcopal priest; saint
• John Berry Meachum: Baptist minister, businessman, educator
• Jane Minor, healer and emancipator
• Jean Baptiste Point du Sable: founder of Chicago and trader
• Lucy Terry: author
• Sojourner Truth: abolitionist and women's rights activist
• Denmark Vesey: led a slave revolt in 1822
• David Walker: abolitionist
• Phillis Wheatley: first published African-American female poet
• Theodore S. Wright: minister, co-founder of American Anti-Slavery Society

1800–1865

• William Wells Brown: fugitive slave, author, playwright, activist
• George Washington Chavis: member of the Mississippi Legislature
• Charlotte L. Brown: civil rights activist in 1860s San Francisco
• Thomas Day: pre-eminent antebellum cabinetmaker and abolitionist from North Carolina
• Martin Delany: abolitionist, writer, physician, and proponent of black nationalism
• Moses Dickson abolitionist, soldier, minister, organizer
• Frederick Douglass: fugitive slave, reformer, writer, and statesman
• William Ellison: property owner and businessman
• John Carruthers Stanly: One of the largest slave owners in North Carolina and the wealthiest free black resident
• Henry Highland Garnet: Abolitionist and educator
• Cynthia Hesdra: former slave and New York businesswoman
• Harriet Jacobs: writer and abolitionist
• Biddy Mason: nurse, midwife, entrepreneur, philanthropist
• Mary Meachum: Underground railroad conductor and President of Colored Ladies Soldiers Aid Society
• William Cooper Nell: journalist
• William Nesbit: civil rights activist in Pennsylvania
• Solomon Northup: writer of slave narrative Twelve Years a Slave
• Sarah Parker Remond: lecturer and abolitionist, physician
• Charles Lenox Remond
• Hiram R. Revels: republican politician, and college administrator
• Daniel Payne: educator, college administrator, and author
• Robert Purvis: abolitionist
• David Ruggles: anti-slavery activist
• Heyward Shepherd: killed in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
• Michael Shiner: diarist
• Maria Stewart: journalist, abolitionist, and activist
• William Still: abolitionist, writer, and activist
• Pierre and Juliette Toussaint: philanthropists
• Harriet Tubman: fugitive slave, abolitionist, Underground Railway organizer ("conductor")
• Harriet Wilson: novelist
• Horace King: architect