Color outside the line : Liminality and Creole identity in Louisiana, colonial era to reconstruction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Wendy Marie Castenell
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Race ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The University ◽  
Free People

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This work examines the construction of racial and caste identity in Louisiana, from the French and Spanish colonial period through Reconstruction. Using painted portraits of Louisiana's mixed race caste of free people of color, this dissertation argues that Creoles of color utilized art as a means of actively constructing their identity as elite, educated, and politically savvy members of Louisiana's social hierarchy. In so doing, this caste used art to resist the dominant Anglo-American racial binary in favor of the more nuanced Latin conception of race. Therefore art, and more specifically portraiture, was a tool to circulate Creoles of color's self-conception as equal citizens, and cultural affiliations with white Creoles within the state. Consequently, portraits of this caste managed to subvert the dominant American racial ideology.

New Struggles and Old Ideas, 1813–1833

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Race ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Population ◽  
Mixed Ancestry ◽  
Social Marginalization ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Free People

This chapter explores the immediate years leading up to the emancipation of Britain’s enslaved population in 1833 and that period’s effect on mixed-race migrants. It contends that Britain was an increasingly hostile place for Jamaican migrants of color, as family and class position no longer sufficiently modified racialized oppression. This is seen in both family correspondences as well as in the experiences of political radicals such as Robert Wedderburn, whose mixed ancestry and social marginalization informed his activist ideologies in London. In Jamaica, however, mixed-race migrants who had returned to the Caribbean made advancements. Not only did the assembly improve the legal position of free people of color, but it promoted British-trained individuals of color in anticipation of the emancipation of enslaved Jamaicans. In particular, emancipation appeared to spell the doom of a permanent, growing white population. A British-educated class of color was now seen as the proper replacement for a declining white cohort.

Inheritance, Family, and Mixed-Race Jamaicans, 1700–1761

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Population ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Interracial Families ◽  
Family Connections ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Free People

This chapter evaluates the evolving legal and cultural standing of elite mixed-race Jamaicans in the first half of the eighteenth century. It describes why so many interracial families formed on the island as well as the legal restrictions imposed on mixed-race people by the colony’s legislature, the Jamaican assembly. In particular, it considers how concerns over the balance between a small white and large enslaved population in Jamaica created security fears as well as demographic anxieties about mixed-race families. However, the chapter shows that elite free people of color carved out legal privileges for themselves by petitioning directly to the assembly. Moreover, the assembly experimented early on with allowing family connections, wealth, and ancestry to put certain mixed-race people into the legal category of “white.” A series of enslaved rebellions in the middle of the eighteenth century named Tacky’s Revolt, along with growing concerns about improper households across the British Empire, resulted in more restrictions against mixed-race Jamaicans generally by 1761. Yet, island rulers still held onto a demographic hope that certain elites of color—namely those who had spent time in Britain—could become the seedbed on which to grow a strong white population.

Racial Segregation under Slavery

Social Forces ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ruef
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Residential Distribution ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
Free People

Abstract Social demographers and historians have devoted extensive research to patterns of racial segregation that emerged under Jim Crow and during the post-Civil Rights era but have paid less attention to the role of slavery in shaping the residential distribution of Black populations in the United States. One guiding assumption has been that slavery rendered racial segregation to be both unnecessary and impractical. In this study, I argue that apart from the master–slave relationship, slavery relentlessly produced racial segregation during the antebellum period through the residential isolation of slaves and free people of color. To explain this pattern, I draw on racial threat theory to test hypotheses regarding interracial economic competition and fear of slave mobilization using data from the 1850 Census, as well as an architectural survey of antebellum sites. Findings suggest that the residential segregation of free people of color increased with their local prevalence, whereas the segregation of slaves increased with the prevalence of the slave population. These patterns continue to hold after controlling for interracial competition over land or jobs and past slave rebellions or conspiracies.

Beyond Sugar

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane I. Seiter
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Lime Kilns ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Develop Land ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Free People

Much has been written about the “sugar revolution” sweeping the islands of the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Recent work by archaeologists, however, has challenged this overarching narrative. On the island of St. Lucia, a program of landscape survey joined with a close analysis of maps and census records has revealed a very different pattern of landscape development. Underneath the remains of vast sugar estates with their monumental surviving architecture—the curing and boiling houses, lime kilns, windmills and water wheels—lies evidence of an earlier phase of small-scale plantations growing a surprising diversity of crops. Building on a legacy of subsistence agriculture inherited from the Amerindians, European settlers on St. Lucia carved out a patchwork of small holdings cultivating cotton, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, ginger, cassava, indigo, and bananas. The comparative absence of large sugar plantations allowed people without much capital to purchase and develop land, creating new opportunities for free people of color to amass wealth and gain political power. The emergence of this class of free black landowners had a profound impact on St. Lucian society, which in turn greatly affected the larger political struggles that rocked the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century.

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