scholarly journals The Complexion Gap: The Economic Consequences of Color among Free African Americans in the Rural Antebellum South

10.3386/w8957 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Bodenhorn
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Free African Americans

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Law ◽  
Freedom Suits ◽  
Free People ◽  
Free African Americans

The Prologue traces African Americans’ experiences with the law and the courts in the antebellum South. It shows the ways in which the law upheld the system of slavery and worked to characterize enslaved men and women as property rather than as people. At times, though, slaves could participate in the legal system as criminal defendants or as they litigated freedom suits. Free people of color, too, appealed to the law to challenge the constraints imposed upon them. The experiences of enslaved and free African Americans in the antebellum South gave them an appreciation of the power of the law, leading them to fight to gain full legal rights after the Civil War.

Emancipation and Free African Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Archer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Population ◽  
African American Population ◽  
Free African Americans

Except in parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut, slavery was a peripheral institution, and throughout New England during and after the Revolution there was widespread support to emancipate slaves. Some of the states enacted emancipation laws that theoretically allowed slavery to continue almost indefinitely, and slavery remained on the books as late as 1857 in New Hampshire. Although the laws gradually abolished slavery and although the pace was painfully slow for those still enslaved, the predominant dynamic for New England society was the sudden emergence of a substantial, free African American population. What developed was an even more virulent racism and a Jim Crow environment. The last part of the chapter is an analysis of where African Americans lived as of 1830 and the connection between racism and concentrations of people of African descent.

Locational Choice in the Antebellum South

1989 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald F. Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Locational Choice ◽  
Migration Decisions

This article examines the economic and noneconomic factors that influenced the migration decisions of antebellum Southern households. It appears that nonslaveowners were neither pushed to inferior locations nor did they move independently of the economic consequences. For slaveowners, the observed links between locational choice and the economic characteristics of locations are weaker. The proportion of whites in a location's population was positively associated with the choice of a location for the nonslaveowners. This association was not found for any other group.

Semisweet

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Miller
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
White House ◽  
Free African Americans ◽  
Indentured Servants

The presidential kitchen employed a number of free African Americans who worked side-by-side with enslaved people and indentured servants. After Emancipation, African Americans dominated the White House kitchen staff, and upon several occasions, the entire culinary workforce. These cooks come to the White House due to professional merit they possess, not the happenstance of being enslaved by the incumbent president. Still, these cooks faced a number of challenges and barriers, inside and outside of the White House, due to racial prejudice. The chapter chronologically profiles James Wormley, Lucy Fowler, Laura "Dollie" Johnson, Alice Howard, John Moaney and Zephyr Wright. These profiles indicate how they overcame various racial challenges. This chapter includes recipes for Pedernales River Chili, and President Eisenhower's Old-Fashioned Beef Stew.

African American Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Free African Americans

The experience of slavery had an indelible effect on the dreams of black Americans. Some slaves dreamt of escape, or of loved ones who had been sold away. Former slaves sometimes had vivid dreams of being returned into slavery. Whether slave or free, African Americans often looked to their dreams as signs from God or as confirmation of their conversion to Christianity. White Americans tended to look down on African American dream practices as superstitious, but in fact, white and black Americans had a shared dream culture that stretched back into the colonial era.

Marronage and the Purchase of Freedom

Slave No More ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Aline Helg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Continent ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
French Colonies ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Free African Americans

This chapter explores the ways in which manumission and the purchase of freedom remained highly dependent on circumstances and geography. Despite the changes caused by wars and the independence of most territories on the American continent, in every state or region in which slavery had not been abolished, slaves, whether Africans or creoles, plantation or mine workers, artisans or servants, continued to use flight as a way to gain their freedom. In Brazil and Spain's former colonies, the opportunities to do so varied considerably. In the French colonies, authorities adapted to the presence of libres de savane and maroons who contributed to the informal economy without directly challenging the system of slavery. In the United States, more and more slaves escaped from Virginia and Maryland toward northern cities where they hoped to blend into small communities of free African Americans; farther south, however, the strengthening and expansion of racial slavery to the detriment of the establishment of free black populations rendered marronage nearly impossible.

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