Commentary by Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
Show your papers or be arrested. Carry them with you at all times
As the outrage swells over the passage, and signing of the draconian Arizona law, in many comments to the numerous diaries calling for action this law has been likened to apartheid in South Africa, when people of color had to carry passbooks.
Depicted above is a copy of Julia Barker's papers, in the Alexandria VA Library collection.
This is a photocopy of a registration certificate allowing a "Free Negro" to reside within the city of Alexandria. State law required African-Americans (freeborn and emancipated) to register with the courthouse and update that registration on a regular basis.
In smaller rural communities, where people knew their neighbors, compliance tended to be lower. In a bustling, transient locality like Alexandria, registration was more likely to be enforced. A Free Negro who could not produce "freedom papers" upon demand could be sold in slavery. The proceeds resulting from the sale went to the local jurisdiction.
Few of these documents survive outside of courthouses, museums, and special collections.
I want to remind us today of the history of people forced to carry papers right here in the USA, some of whom were my own ancestors and extended kin. We are all pretty familiar with stories of enslaved African Americans and the history of slavery. But often overlooked are the stories of those people who lived "free", either by birth or manumission in the South. "Free People of Color" or FPOCs, lived in a marginal world of fear of re-enslavement and intolerance.
A classic text on this subject was written in 1974 by Ira Berlin.
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South. It was re-issued in 2007 by The New Press.
The book draws stark contrasts between the status of free blacks in the north and those in the south. It details the lives of over a quarter million who remained in the south, tied to land and family, many of whom remained in bondage.
Part of that life and their shaky legal status was tied to having to register, and carry papers.
Genealogist and historian Anita Willis writes in The Roots of Racial Profiling
How old is racial profiling?
The Free Negro Registry was a means of identifying and tracking so-called Free Persons of Color. In colonial Virginia, all Free Persons of Color were required to show identification to any white person on demand. After the Civil War, the laws were reversed, but only to be revived in 1880 as the Jim Crow laws (named after a black minstrel character). Many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed during the 1960's Civil Rights movement; however, they are resurfacing again in the guise of racial profiling. Although racial profiling is not backed by written statutes, its roots are in the laws enacted during colonial times. Racial profiling, for want of a better term, is a Gateway Act -- an excuse used to approach citizens assumed to be criminals.
Take the stories of Mary and Patty Bowden, mulatto indentured servants born in the mid-eighteenth century to George Washington's family. At the age of seven, Mary was profiled and taken to court by Augustine Washington Senior (George Washington's father). At court, she was judged to be mulatto, sentenced to a thirty-year indenture, and was ordered to serve her indenture with Washington. Because of her mixed race status, Mary had no rights in her community. Today, because of their appearance and ethnicity, citizens are being stopped, searched, and arrested. Were Mary to return to modern-day America she might pause to wonder if she was in the 18th century, not the 21st.
The Free Negro Registry required registration every three years in the Virginia counties and cities. The minimum recorded information included the age, name, color and stature, by whom and in what court the said Negro, or mulatto, was emancipated. Most registrations went further and recorded skin color (dark or light mulatto), hair texture and color (straight, kinky, red, or black), height, marks or colors, and the names of parents. The Free Negro Registry was a means to restrict the coming and going of Negroes in colonial Virginia and other parts of the South.
Let's take a look at the Black Laws of Virginia, which became a model for those adopted in every slave state. The Balch Library in Loudoun County has a collection of teaching materials on the subject All of the laws enacted are too long to copy here, but certain ones illustrate the point.
An introduction to the Black Laws of Virginia
Commissioner of Revenue Lists of Free Negroes
In 1801, the state legislature decreed that county commissioners of the revenue were to return a complete list of all free Negroes in their district on an annual basis. This list was to contain names, gender, residence, and trade of each free Negro. A copy of the list was to be posted on the door of the county court house. If a registered free Negro moved to another county, then magistrates there could issue a warrant for him unless he was employed. Otherwise, he would be jailed as a vagrant.
Petitions to remain in Virginia
In 1806, the General Assembly moved to remove the free Negro population from Virginia with a law that stated that all emancipated slaves, freed after May 1, 1806, who remained in the Commonwealth more than a year, would forfeit his right to freedom and be sold by the Overseers of the Poor for the benefit of the parish. Families wishing to stay were to petition the legislature through the local county court. In 1826 the Sheriff replaced the Overseers of the Poor as the selling agent for free Negroes remaining in Virginia. The Court could authorize this sale only upon a jury verdict or confession by the party. In 1831 the law was amended slightly: the sheriff could sell the free Negroes at an auction who remained in Virginia contrary to the 1806 law.
This law remained in effect until 1837 when the General Assembly changed their mind, inundated by this time with petitions from free Negroes and from whites dependent upon their skills. Now, the legislature said, any slave emancipated since May 1, 1806 could apply to the local court for permission to remain in Virginia.
Upon satisfactory proof that the petitioner was of good character, peaceable, orderly, industrious, and not addicted to drunkenness, or other vices, permission could be granted. A notice had to appear on the court house door for two months announcing the petitioner’s intent to remain in the State and three-quarters of the justices of the court had to agree that the individual, couple, or family could remain.
Those registries, and petitions are now available online.
It was in one of those registers that I got a description of an ancestor, James Fields, from whose hard work and diligence I inherited land in Loudoun County, VA. I do not have a picture of him; all I have are these words.
From Abstracts of Loudoun County Register of Free Negroes 1844-1861 by Patricia B Duncan
Pg. 13
Name: James Fields.
Proof: free man as proved by oath of John Beavers
Description: nearly 29 years old, 5’ 9" tall, black colour, two scars in the forehead, a small and a large one and one on the back of his left hand very plain above his forefinger about 1’ long.
Date: 10, June 1845.
Reading through the registry entries is like reading a laundry list of scars and burns. Since no photo IDs were available during those times, meticulous attention was paid by white authorities to details about moles, skin color, hair, and scars...lots of scars.
Charles City County VA: Free Negroes & Mulattoes has a photo of one free negro family:
Pictured to the left: Reuben Brown (registered 21 MAR 1844), wife Susan W. Harris Brown (registered 20 JUL 1848) and their children, including sons Braxton and Powhatan (registered 18 OCT 1860). The Brown family left Charles City for Ohio before the start of the Civil War.
The registration of free Negroes and Mulattoes began in Virginia in 1793 with passage of a law that required free persons of color to register with the Clerk of Court in the county where they resided and to carry their "free papers" with them at all times. Although the legal definition of Mulatto changed over time, as first enacted in 1705, the term Mulatto applied to a person who was one-eighth (or more) Negro or one-half Indian. By 1866 one-quarter Negro blood made a person "colored," whereas one-quarter Indian blood made a person Indian. If records have survived registrations of free Negroes and Mulattoes commonly appear in two places; namely, in the court minute or order books recording the actions taken by the court when in session and in a separate register which lists registrants by their certificate number.
Here are some sample registrations from their database:
Ordered that it be certified that it appears to the satisfaction of the Court on the testimony of Wm. H. Hubbard, that Louisa Christian, a black woman, 21 years of age, 5 ft. 2 inches high, with a scar on the left arm occasioned from a cut and a large scar on the breast occasioned from a burn, was born free in this County.
Ordered that it be certified that it appears to the satisfaction of the Court by the testimony of William F. Walker that Sally Brown, daughter of Betsy Brown the midwife, a woman of brown complexion 27 years old the 9th Decem. last, 5 feet 4 inches high, two scars on the left of the neck, one on the breast near (?) the collar bone, and two or three on the forehead
Ordered that it be certified that it appears to the satisfaction of the Court on the testimony of Wm. H. Hubbard, that Louisa Christian, a black woman, 21 years of age, 5 ft. 2 inches high, with a scar on the left arm occasioned from a cut and a large scar on the breast occasioned from a burn, was born free in this County.
You had to carry papers whether you were born free or emancipated. When he was emancipated in the will of his owner, my great grandfather didn't leave Virginia. He was waiting to marry my great grandmother Millie, who remained enslaved. So he would have to have free papers, and he also lived under fear of deportation.
The will emancipating my great grandfather Presley Roberts was emotionally difficult for me to read at first. He was less important than quilts and pewter.
I, Margaret Humphrey of the County of Loudoun and State of Virginia do make this my last will and treatment as follows.
I give to my niece Margaret Clagett, my large walnut dining table and case of drawers.
I give to my niece Margaret Hesser my pewter plates and her choice of my bed quilts.
I give to my niece Sara Ann Hesser my large pewter dish and the next choice of my bed quilts.
I give to my niece Rebecca Scott her next choice of my bed quilts.
I give to my sister Mary Peugh one hundred dollars.
I give to my two slaves James and Presley their freedom one hundred dollars each and also to each one the years wages for which he may be hired at the time of my death.
The residue of my estate (excepting my slave Lewis) real and personal shall be sold by the executor, and I give to him one fifth part thereof and my slave Lewis, also certain property bought by me at the sale of the property of John Hesser and now in his possession. In trust nevertheless for the sole and separate use of my sister Sylvia Hesser during her life, to be held by him for the purposes of this trust free from the control and debts of her husband John Hesser
Here are the freedom papers of another ancestor Joseph Trammell:
Regulating the movements of FPOC began quite early.
Race and Slavery Petitions Project has listings of chancery court records from all the slave holding states, and many of the records include FPOC.
Here is an early entry from Delaware, in 1786:
Twenty-one petitioners ask the legislature to more rigorously regulate the movements of people of color. They argue that "under the name and Character of Free Negroes many idle and evil-disposed Slaves througout this County stroll thro the same, some with, and some without passes or Certificates." There are also many black "Stragglers and Vagabonds From the Neighbouring Counties" who "come and go in similar Circumstances and under the same character, whereby their legal owners are for a long time deprived of their Service." They further assert that "numbers of Negroes who have been manumitted in other States and Countyes have come into ours, many of whom are likely to become Chargeable." They seek a law prohibiting "the Negroes aforesaid, from travelling Especially from one County into the other without a Written or printed pass or Certificate." The pass, "with the County Seal affixed thereto," should include the bearer's name and place of abode.
Sounds like the same arguments against "illegals", and border crossers made by right wingers and nativists today. "Likely to become chargable" (read burden on the taxpayer)
Enslaved blacks had to carry papers and passes as well. The infamous slave patrols, or "pattyrollers" are well documented in both slave narratives and historical documents.
Slave patrols(called patrollers, pattyrollers or paddy rollers by the slaves) were organized groups of three to six white men who enforced discipline upon black slaves during the antebellum U.S. southern states. They policed the slaves on the plantations and hunted down fugitive slaves. Patrols used summary punishment against escapees, which included maiming or killing them. Beginning in 1704 in South Carolina, slave patrols were established and the idea spread throughout the southern states.
Slave patrols began with colonial attempts to regulate slavery through laws that limited enslaved people's abilities and required all settlers to assist in enforcing the slave codes. As the population of black slaves increased, so did the fear and threat of foreign invasion which further increased the institution of slave patrols. Encountered slaves without passes were expected to be returned to their owners, and sometimes punished. As this approach became more ineffective, Slave patrols were formally established. Slave patrols consisted of white men from all social classes. This caused trouble for both enslaved and free black people as it restricted their movement. Black people were subjected to question, searches, and other forms of harassment, often leading to whippings and beatings for people who may not have broken any law.
Duties of the slave patrols included "apprehending runaways, monitored the rigid pass requirements for blacks traversing the countryside, broke up large gatherings and assemblies of blacks, visited and searched slave quarters randomly, inflicted impromptu punishments, and as occasion arose, suppressed insurrections." During these times, slaves were often neglected and mistreated despite having permission to travel. Slave owners feared slave gatherings would allow them to trade or steal goods and the potential for a rebellion. South Carolina and Virginia selected patrols from state militias. Slave patrols were often equipped with guns and whips and would exert brutal and racially motivated control. At times African Americans developed many methods of challenging slave patrolling, occasionally fighting back violently. The Civil War developed more opportunities for resistance against slave patrols and made it easier for enslaved people to escape.
Paddyrollers often had badges. They were sort of like border cops, or local sheriffs.
You can find them up for sale frequently on E-Bay and auction houses. Prized "Confederate Memorabilia".
One of the arguments presented against allowing slaves to read and write, was that they could then forge passes to get through the patrols, or have forged registration papers. FPOC, with access to education in some areas were often under suspicion of being forgers, and assisting their enslaved brethren to escape.
Laws about forging counterfeit registers
In 1795, the legislature decreed that any person who forged or counterfeited papers giving a slave freedom was to pay a $200.00 fine and suffer imprisonment for one year without bail.
An ugly history. In a nation with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. And now we turn the spotlight of scrutiny on those who would force our citizens born with a different complexion, or facial features, or hair texture to "carry those papers".
Their surnames may not be Jackson, or Johnson or Williams. More like Lopez, or Vasquez or Morales (or Moulitsas Zúñiga). But the intent is the same.
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Todays News by and dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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I have to give Microsoft an A+ grade on this one! Google News: Microsoft to invest in small black-owned firms in South Africa
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Microsoft is to invest half a billion rands in small black-owned software development firms in South Africa, the company said Friday.
The deal falls under South Africa's black economic empowerment policies introduced in 2003, to redress apartheid-era laws which barred most black people from any meaningful economic activity.
"We want to create a new model for entrepreneurship and set a new benchmark for developing talent in the local software industry," Microsoft South Africa managing director Mteto Nyati told AFP.
"We want (black economic empowerment) to be associated with real development, job creation, business development and skills enhancement.
"We came up with something unique and hope this model would be used by other companies."
The empowerment deal will see the company invest 472 million rands (67.4 million US dollars, 50.3 million euros) over the next seven years into the country's software industry.
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The sad fact is that this may finally put Haiti's problems at the top of World's spolight, but in an equally bad way. EbonyJet: Oil in Haiti?
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There are two major concerns coming out of the situation in Haiti these days. One concern is that not enough is being done, or if it is being done than the job is much larger than anyone anticipated. Quietly, however, a new concern is emerging - that there may be other factors when it comes to Haiti, especially the ulterior motivating factor known as "Oil".
Bloomberg News is reporting that there may indeed be oil offshore in Haiti, and natural gas reserves that could reshape the economic landscape of the island nation:
The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters, probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the report.
Among nations in the northern Caribbean, Cuba and Jamaica have awarded offshore leases for oil and gas development. Trinidad and Tobago, South American islands off the coast of Venezuela, account for most Caribbean oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
What this means is that a decade ago the United States Government, knew there was oil off of Haiti at a time when the Bush administration was choking the country’s foreign aid. Keep in mind we’re talking about the same Bush administration that went to war in Iraq for what many believe was to only to get at that country’s oil. It is the same administration that declared Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez public enemy number one, Venezuela being another oil rich nation.
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After a "turbulent" start Zuma unlike his predecesor has taken this problem head on. New York Times: South Africa Unleashes Plan to Slow AIDS Crisis
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South Africa, trying to overcome years of denial and delay in confronting its monumental AIDS crisis, is now in the midst of a feverish buildup of testing, treatment and prevention that United Nations officials say is the largest and fastest expansion of AIDS services ever attempted by any nation.
The undertaking will be expensive and difficult to pull off, but in the past month alone the government has enabled 519 hospitals and clinics to dispense AIDS medicines, more than it had in all the years combined since South Africa began providing antiretroviral drugs to its people in 2004, South African health officials said.
To accomplish this, the government has trained the hundreds of nurses now prescribing the drugs — formerly the province of doctors — and will train thousands more so that each of the country’s 4,333 public clinics can dispense AIDS medicines, a step Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi called essential to combating "this monster amongst us" in a country short of physicians.
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The Grio: Is pollution in small town La. a case of environmental racism?
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About three and a half hours west of New Orleans, there's a town -- Mossville, Louisiana. It's a predominantly African-American town. It's been that way since the 1790s.
The town is still tiny. There are only about 800 people at its core. But it's no longer a farm town. Fields were replaced with houses and chemical plants. Fourteen plants now surround the small community.
Decades after the first chemical companies moved in, Mossville residents are convinced that these plants are making them sick.
"People are suffering from health problems directly associated with some of the chemicals that are released from these plants," said Dorothy Felix.
Felix has lived in Mossville most of her life. Her hometown has long served as a refuge for blacks who weren't welcome in other communities.
"We were here before these plants came and we were here because this was a Afro-American community and we didn't have anywhere that we could go. We had to go somewhere were we felt safe and away from all the racial problems that were going on. This was the place for us. Now they're forcing us to leave."
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With their ''guerrilla'' tactics, black organic farmers are taking Malcolm X's mandate of ''by any means necessary'' and turning it green. It is time, they say, to change an unhealthy paradigm. The Root: An Earth Day Solution For Urban Food Deserts
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"Usilima hua huli.'' (If you don't farm, you are not eating.)
--Bena (Tanzania) Proverb
Veronica Kyle of Chicago is not happy, but she is hopeful. Her upset stems from knowing that too many blacks and Hispanics living in urban settings must travel far to purchase fresh, nutritional, appropriately priced fruit, vegetables and meat products. During that trip, they traverse food deserts. She says those are neighborhoods that major supermarkets have effectively redlined, where shops sell 20 fried chicken wings for a dollar, where there are too many liquor and fast-food stores. Where there are far too many dialysis centers and where too many amputees, the victims of poor diets, walk the streets.
Kyle is an outreach coordinator for Faith in Place, an umbrella organization of more than 500 Illinois religious congregations united ''to promote clean energy & [SIC] sustainable farming.'' Speaking optimistically, Kyle declares, ''there are black people getting serious about changing this unhealthy paradigm.''
For more than a decade, across the country, there's been a growing network of African-American locavores, or farmers, vendors, and fans of naturally or organically cultivated vegetables and livestock grown or produced within a 150-mile radius of markets. They meet up in some of the most unlikely places, from Brooklyn, N.Y., to the southeastern part of the country to Wisconsin to Chicago to northern California. Many of the farmers, descendants of blacks who fled sharecropping and segregation during the Great Migration, now sell victuals at farmers markets that are becoming fixtures in black neighborhoods. The farmers also sell to food co-ops in the same areas. Some supply produce to black-owned (and other) restaurants, as well as well-known natural food supermarkets.
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Times Argus: Long-ago black community adds to the picture of early Vermont
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"Shubael Clark paused his horse at the bottom of the Hill and studied the 2,000-foot rise that was darkened by a canopy of old-growth beech and maple trees, many six feet around, that prevented the sunshine from reaching the forest floor."
W
With these words, Vermont historian Elise Guyette begins the extraordinary story of a group of families living on a hill in Hinesburg starting in 1795. What makes these eight families noteworthy is that they were African-American.
Guyette's description of their lives here enriches our understanding of what early Vermont was like. It wasn't as lily white as we sometimes assume. Far from being an exotic exception to the rule, argues Guyette in her new book, "Discovering Black Vermont: African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790-1890," these families and others like them were an important aspect of Vermont society from the very start.
True, blacks made up only 0.2 or 0.3 percent of all Vermonters between 1790 and 1870, but Guyette notes that they often lived in clusters that made them a much more visible part of some communities. In 1790, for example, they represented 7 percent of the population of Vergennes. Ten years later, they comprised about 4 percent of Braintree. In 1810, Ferrisburgh had the state's largest black population with 48 residents, or about 3 percent of the population.
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The Baptist Standard: African-American churches see a revival of cooperation
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In Chicago, black Baptists announced they would raise $50 million for health clinics, schools and reconstructed churches in earthquake-devastated Haiti.
In South Carolina, three black Methodist denominations launched a plan to host Saturday academies nationwide to mentor young black males.
And in Miami, African-American Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals decided to re-establish the Conference of National Black Churches to work together on health disparities, economic empowerment and social justice.
Recent months have seen a resurgence of interdenominational relations in some of the nation’s most prominent predominantly black churches.
Franklyn Richardson of Mount Vernon, N.Y., chairman of the National Action Network, exhorts his followers during an appearance at the National Baptist Convention, USA. (RNS File Photo/Aimee Jeansonne)
While some are responding to the tragedy in Haiti and others are trying to revive long-term efforts to help black communities, they all say they’ve determined they can do more together than any one group could do by itself.
"If we can make a difference with black men in our communities, it will affect the whole community," said Carolyn Tyler Guidry, president of the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the denominations that met at the black Methodist summit in Columbia, S.C. "It will affect families—black families in particular—when their men are not incarcerated or on drugs."
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One point that shouldn't be over looked is that Brown and Black folks suffer from greater levels of lack of health care. NPR: Black Americans Look To Health Plan For New Hope
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Death rates for cancer, stroke and diabetes are solemn warning notices for African-Americans, who suffer from those and other diseases at a higher rate than do whites.
So when some members of Congress called the new health care overhaul the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century, many African-Americans agreed.
There's a debate about whether the coming changes will actually ease the health disparities that black Americans face
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Contributor
Of all the poems since the late 70's by Nikki Giovanni, "Nikki-Rosa"
is probably the most anthologized, critiqued, essayed and
deconstructed in her oeuvre. Not much more can be written than what
has already been written about the poem's intense voice in advocacy of
personal and cultural identity; its chronicle of familial connection
over the generations; and the poem's embrace of essential, common
truths. Better to let Nikki Giovanni tell it. Better to let her tell
of those days when she was known as...
Nikki-Rosa
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you're Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself
and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understand their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father's pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
-- Nikki Giovanni
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The Front Porch is now open. Pull up a chair, snuggle up on the glider, set and talk with us for a spell.
If you are new, introduce yourself to the family.
Reminder: Black Kos Week in Review on Friday will now post at 3PM EST.