100 Amazing Facts About The Negro - African American History
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossPBS.orgThis website is no longer actively maintainedSome material and features may be unavailable100 Amazing Facts About the NegroFree Blacks Lived in the North, Right?by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Originally posted on The RootI hope it’s clear by now I love facts, especially those that surprise — even shock — us out of ourassumptions. Don’t get me wrong. All of us, including scholars in various elds, have so muchinformation to assimilate on a daily basis that it is dif cult to avoid shorthand in conversation. Theproblem arises when we simplify and thereby distort. This is especially true when it comes to thehistory of slavery.Most of us know that before the American Civil War there were so-called slave states and free states.Knowing this, our minds ll in the map with logic. If such a line as “Mason-Dixon” existed (actually,there were a series of lines drawn by “compromising” Congresses throughout the rst half of the 19thcentury), slaves must have resided below it and free black people above it, with every man, woman andchild in chains trying to escape to the North just as soon as they could — following the proverbialNorth Star to a new life of unbounded opportunity — while those already up there remained vigilantagainst being kidnapped back into slavery down in the South.Then a book comes along — a once-in-a-generation masterpiece of research and analysis — that shakesup our constellation of inherited “facts” to the point that we no longer feel comfortable assuminganything about what was so in the black past, and why it occurred. That’s exactly what the greathistorian Ira Berlin did in his book, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the AntebellumSouth (initially published in 1974, and reissued by the New Press in 2007), a book I read as a graduatestudent, then returned to recently, to help me understand a puzzling fact in my own family tree.Genealogists for our Finding Your Roots PBS series told me that I had descended from three sets offourth great-grandparents who had been freed well before the Civil War. (Unless, like comedian WandaSykes, you descend from a mulatto child born to a white mother, all of your African-American ancestorswere once slaves; the only question is when they became free, which for 90 percent of us was eitherduring the Civil War or with the rati cation of the 13th Amendment following the war.) Two sets of myhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/1/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to Crossown ancestors (the Cliffords and the Redmans) were free people by the time of the AmericanRevolution, and the other set, the Bruces, were freed in the will of their master in 1823.As if this weren’t surprising enough, it was another fact that drove me to re-read Ira Berlin’s book aboutfreed slaves. All of these people, and their descendants, continued to live in slave-holding Virginia,even during the Civil War. (Their part of Virginia would join the Union as the state of West Virginia inthe middle of the war, but they had no way of knowing this when they decided to remain there, ratherthan ee.) Why didn’t my great-great-great-great-grandparents run away to safety in the North, ratherthan remain in the Potomac Valley region of slave-holding western Virginia, about 30 miles, as a matterof fact, from where I was born? Free Negroes headed north just as soon as they could, right? Didn’t myancestors’ decision to stay put in the Confederacy run counter to what we all understood about thehistory of slavery?I turned to Ira Berlin’s book for answers, and I was astonished to learn that my ancestors’ presence inthe South and their decision to stay put during the war were not as uncommon as I had imagined. Andperhaps most remarkable of all is the fact that professor Berlin explained the mystery of my ancestors’(and many others’) seemingly counterintuitive decisions using numbers in plain sight, including thosein the 1860 U.S. Census.In that raging year of Lincoln’s election and Southern secession, there were a total of 488,070 freeblacks living in the United States, about 10 percent of the entire black population. Of those, 226,152lived in the North and 261,918 in the South, in 15 states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri,North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, SouthCarolina and Texas) plus the District of Columbia. Let me break that down further: A few months beforethe Confederacy was born, there were 35,766 more free black people living in the slave-owning Souththan in the North, and removing D.C. from the equation wouldn’t have shifted the result. And theystayed there during the Civil War.Don’t believe it? You can now fact-check the numbers yourself on the U.S. CensusBureau website. Amazing, right? Even if, as Berlin illustrates in a companion table, 100 percent of theAfrican Americans living in the North were free in 1860 (compared to only 6.2 percent in the South), itstill is a puzzle to gure out why the majority lived below the Mason-Dixon Line. And here’s the kicker:At no time before the Civil War (at least not after the rst U.S. Census was taken in 1790 and futurestates were added) did free blacks in the North ever outnumber those in the South!To me, learning about this aspect of African-American history was as astonishing as any of the“amazing” facts on Joel A. Rogers’ original list of 100. (Rogers didn’t include this one on his list, but hedid claim that some of these Southern Free Negroes fought for the Confederacy, a claim that we shallexamine in another column.) Despite countless stories I’d read and heard about the UndergroundRailroad, with abolitionists on one side and re-eaters on the other, there was, I now knew, a morecomplex landscape underfoot. Black history is full of surprises and contradictions, and this is one of themost surprising and seemingly contradictory ones that I have encountered.First things rst: How did more free blacks end up living in the South? Weren’t their lives a living hell?In this week’s column, I plan to address those questions. Next week, I’ll tackle why so many, like severalgenerations of my own ancestors, stayed.Luckily, Ira Berlin has the answers, and if you seek them, too, I urge you to read his book, since there’sno way I can possibly capture its many dimensions — or its brilliance — in this column. There’s areason Slaves Without Masters won the National History Society’s Best Book Prize, and Berlin is thehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/2/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossDistinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland in College Park ( tting also becauseMaryland was the state with the largest population of free blacks in 1860 — 83,942 — and the highestproportion of free versus enslaved blacks, with 49.1 percent free).Who They Were and How They Got ThereTo understand how the South created — and acquired — its majority of free black people, you wouldhave to travel back further in time to the Revolutionary War, when natural rights fever and militarynecessity ( rst, among the British) stimulated the rst major surge of free blacks in America. Beforethen, there were a scant few, Berlin writes (in 1755, Maryland, the only English colony to keep track,counted 1,817; Virginia had about the same in 1782). By 1810, there were 108,265, representing “thefastest-growing element in the Southern population,” with a dramatic 89.3 percent spike between 1790and 1800 and another 76.8 percent jump between 1800 and 1810.There were other sources besides manumissions (formal acts of emancipation by slaveowners), to besure, including an increase in runaways and immigrants. Among the immigrants were free blackseeing the West Indies (often with their own slaves) during the 1791 slave revolt against the French inSaint-Dominque, which became the independent Republic of Haiti in 1804. In part because of thatrevolt, another important surge in the Southern free black population occurred when NapoleonBonaparte, exhausted and in need of cash from France’s defeat by the slaves, sold his country’s vastLouisiana territory to the Americans under its slave-owning president, Thomas Jefferson, in 1803. Withit, the U.S. acquired thousands of “free people of color,” many of whom had sprung from sexual unionsbetween French and Spanish colonists and black slaves.Still another group of free people of color (originally from Saint-Dominique) emigrated to New Orleansfrom Cuba in 1809, in the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars, doubling the size of the black populationthere. While the rate of growth among Southern free blacks would slow across nearly every decadeleading up to the Civil War (the growth rate was a mere 10 percent between 1850 and 1860), by 1810the South had a free black population that was there to say.So who were they?The short answer is they lived as far as they could from what we know as the Gone With the Wind South.As Berlin shows in a demographic pro le as concise as it is clear, free blacks in the South largelyresided in cities — the bigger the better, because that’s where the jobs were (in 1860, 72.7 percent ofurban free blacks lived in Southern cities of 10,000 or more). They were predominantly female (52.6percent of free blacks in the South were women in 1860), because, according to Berlin, free black menhad a greater tendency to move out of the region. They also were older than the average slave, becausethey often had to wait to earn or buy their freedom, or, in not uncommon cases, be “dumped” by theirowners as weak or in rm (in 1860, 20 percent of free blacks were over the age of 40 compared to 15percent of slaves and whites). Free blacks also were lighter in color (40.8 percent of Southern freeblacks in 1860 reported mixed racial ancestry versus 10.4 percent of slaves); not surprisingly, slaveswith their master’s blood were more likely to be favored by him and, as Berlin shows, favored slaveswere more likely to be freed.Two SouthsHere’s where the monolith falls apart, however. As critical as Berlin’s ndings about the North andSouth was his revelation that the South really consisted of “two Souths”: an Upper and a Lower,distinguished, among other things, by their histories, geographies and outlooks.http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/3/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossThe Upper South (think Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and later Kentucky, Missouri,Tennessee and D.C.) had been marked by its earlier history of manumission following the Revolution; italso had a more negative outlook about slavery’s future as a result of its increasingly inhospitable soil(for more on this, see Amazing Fact, “What Was the Second Middle Passage?”).The Lower South (think Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South, Carolina andTexas), by contrast, had never embraced manumission fever, and because there was still so much moneyto be made off the cotton trade (see Amazing Fact, “Why Was Cotton King?”), it never wavered in itscommitment to the slave economy.Consequently, there were two broad groups of Southern free blacks, Berlin writes. Not only did the vastmajority live in the Upper South (224,963 in 1860 versus 36,955 in the Lower South in 1860), they wereon average darker-skinned and more rural than their Lower South counterparts. By contrast, free blacksin the Lower South were fewer in number, lighter-skinned and more urban, creating a much morepronounced three-caste system and within it various gradations of blackness, including mulattoes(those who would be called biracial today), quadroons (those with one black grandparent) andoctoroons (those with one black great-grandparent).According to Berlin, “throughout the South, a light skin was the freeman’s distinguishing characteristic,”and “[t]he slaveholder’s increasingly selective liberation of favored bondsmen and the dif culties slaveshad running away or purchasing their liberty meant that free Negroes were generally more skilled,literate, and well connected with whites than the mass of slaves.” This was especially true in the LowerSouth, where some free blacks even owned slaves — among them were Andrew Durnford of Louisiana,who, says Berlin, had “some seventy- ve slaves” working on his sugar plantation.Jim Crow: The PrequelI hope I’m not giving you the wrong impression about free black life in the antebellum South, becauselife for them there was “no crystal stair,” to quote Langston Hughes. Laws, especially in the UpperSouth, re ected whites’ suspicion (very often hatred) of free blacks, and there were repeated attemptsto deport them, to register them, to jail the indolent and tax and extort the wage-earner, todisenfranchise the free black caste altogether from voting or testifying in court against whites. To leavelittle doubt, as Berlin quotes the saying at the time, that “even the lowest whites [could] threaten freeNegroes with ‘a good nigger beating.'”This created perverse incentives for free blacks to try hard to distinguish themselves from slaves,sometimes even to “pass” (pdf) out of the “black” caste as “white” if they could. Throughout the region,repressive laws helped create the conditions for a vast underclass that for most free blacks meantliving along a very thin line between slavery and freedom, debt and dependency, poverty and pride. Infact, many of those same laws would lay the groundwork for what would follow after the Civil War andReconstruction during the Jim Crow era.By the 1850s, Berlin reveals, only Delaware, Missouri and Arkansas still allowed legal manumission offree blacks, and Arkansas, on the eve of secession, threatened its small population of free blacks withan impossible choice: self-deport (where have we heard that before?) or be re-enslaved. The result:Across the South in the antebellum period, there were “quasi-free” blacks who had been illegally freedwithout papers or prospects. Add to them those who passed as white or were kidnapped back intobondage, and it begins to make even the clearest of census numbers seem shaky.http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/4/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossSo under those conditions, why would any free black remain in the South? Next week’s article in ourseries will address what impelled my ancestors and so many others to stay put on the eve of the CivilWar. Until then, remember to be careful what you say shorthand in conversation. As I told an audiencein Charlotte, N.C., last month, what was true for the ancient Greeks remains true for those conductinggenealogical research today: “Know thyself.”Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website.Read all 100 Facts on The Root. Share Tweet Share ShareTags: 19th century, Civil War, J.A. Rogers, Jim Crow, slavery, underground railroadPREVIOUS FACTNEXT FACT‘Plessy v. Ferguson’: Who WasPlessy?What Was the Civil RightsMovement? Comments for this thread are now closed.12 CommentsMany Rivers to Cross (PBS) Recommend 2 Share1 LoginSort by BestDominicana 2 years agoPlease forgive the duplication in the event my original post appears.My family left Hispaniola after the slave revolt. I am not sure how long they were on the island. It was"discovered" in 1492, so it is hard to tell. What we do know is that our written and very trackedhistory appears when they set foot on American soil as Free People of Color.They were called "mulattos and mulatees" due to their very mixed heritage and appearance. Fourcame in through Savannah, Georgia. Two came in through Rhode Island on an actual chartered shipand at least one came through Louisiana. They lived and "hid" in plain site in Delaware, Maryland,Louisiana, South Carolina, and Augusta, Ga.We are listed in the 1840 US Census in Maryland as Free People of Color and also on the census inGeorgia, Delaware, and Texas.I know there are not a lot of People of Color with stories similar to ours, but these stories and thesepeople do exist. We are proof of that. We have been tracking and documenting our history since weset foot in America.My little cousin told his teacher our story and our history and she told him that ALL Blacks that live inAmerica were slaves in America straight from Africa. Sad when that myth is perpetuated byteachers.It's time for our family and people like our family to tell our story. There may not be many, but peopleneed to know so hopefully the history books will be corrected or amended.6 Share ›Kevin 2 years agohttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/5/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossKevin 2 years agoThe cruelty towards free blacks was as bad in the north as in the south. Slavery had become asouthern affair, but bigotry was truly an issue for all of America. The poor whites nationwide fearedfree black competition and arranged for numerous race laws in the north and south both. AbrahamLincoln himself believed the racism was too deep seated to be dealt with, and so advocatedremoving the blacks from the whole country, not just the south.5 Share ›StEwPiD MoNkEy Kevin 2 years agohow did the poor whites arrange this? Share ›Kevin StEwPiD MoNkEy 2 years agoThe normal way, through legislation passed by elected officials. This link has a decentexploration of the bigotry in northern policy at the time.http://slavenorth.com/exclusio. Share ›Tamari Bond 3 years agoMy older family actually comes from the south. I don't know why they moved, but that's how I endedup here.1 Share ›Lyndia 3 years agoI read the Free Negro in Virginia, while in college during the 80's. I was amazed that there were freeNegros during that era.1 Share ›Oscillatory Chaos Lyndia 3 years agoIt's Negroes, not "Negros." I see college didn't teach spelling.3 Share ›Milt Brooks 3 years agoMy family is one that stayed in the South (Goochland Co., VA) had a 500 acre Black owned plantationrecorded on a Confederate map. It seems they thrived during this period (1824 1875) until the JimCrow laws caught up with them.1 Share ›Sophie 2 years agoso why didnt the slaves in the south move to the north during the time of reconstruction? Share ›Rev. Roosevelt Baums 3 years agoThank God for this book, I recommend it for your library also. Share ›http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/6/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History Blog The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossRosanna Metoyer 3 years agoIt is very interesting to learn this information. I did used to think that all free blacks lived in thenorthern part of our country. I definitely want to read that book. Share ›pghsheep 2 years agoAnyone who still divides neighbor against neighbor as black or white is racist!!! Share › Subscribe d Add Disqus to your site Add Disqus Addὑ PrivacyCONNECT WITH PROF. GATES! http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african americans many rivers to cross/history/free blacks lived in the north right/7/9
8/26/2016Why Did Free Blacks Stay in the South? African American History
100 Amazing Facts About the Negro Free Blacks Lived in the North, Right? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Originally posted on The Root I hope it’s clear by now I love facts, especially those that surprise — even shock — us out of our assumptions. Don’t get me wrong. All of us, including scholars in various elds, have so much
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The following Fact Fluency Card labels are included in this pack: 1. Plus One Facts 2. Plus Two Facts 3. Plus Three Facts 4. Minus One Facts 5. Minus Two Facts 6. Minus Three Facts 7. Facts of Five 8. Doubles Facts (Addition) 9. Doubles Facts (Subtraction) 10. Near Doubles Facts (e.g. 6 7 6 6 1 12 1 13) 11. Facts of Ten: Addition 12.
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