Mixed Race Studies

The most striking characteristic of the free Negro communities was the prominence of the mulatto element.  About thirty-seven per cent of the free Negroes in the United States in 1850 were classed as mulattoes, while only about a twelfth of the slave population was regarded as of mixed blood. Although no definite information exists concerning the number of mulattoes during the colonial period, we find that in 1752 in Baltimore County, Maryland, 196 of the 312 mulattoes were free, while all of the 4,035 Negroes except eight were slaves. Early in the settlement of Virginia doubt concerning the status of mulatto children was the occasion for special legislation which determined that mulatto children should have the status of their mother. In Maryland, by an act in 1681, children born of white servant women and Negroes were free. By another act in 1692 mulatto children through such unions lost their free status and became servants for a long term.  In Pennsylvania the mulattoes followed the status of their mothers, and when the offspring of a free mother became a servant for a term of years.

The conspicuousness of the mulatto element in the free Negro population was not due, therefore, to any legal presumption in its favor. The accessions to the free Negro class through unions of free white women and Negro men, and free colored women and white men was kept at a minimum by the drastic laws against such unions. Nor can the enormous increase in the free mulattoes be accounted for by natural increase from their own numbers. The increase in the number of free mulattoes came chiefly from the offspring of slave women and white masters, who manumitted their mulatto children. Russell says concerning the free mulattoes of Virginia: “The free mulatto class, which numbered 23,500 by 1860, was of course the result of illegal relations of white persons with Negroes; but, excepting those born of mulatto parents, most persons of the free class were not born of free Negro or free white mothers, but of slave mothers, and were set free because of their kinship to their master and owner.” Snydor in showing how the sex relations existing between masters and slaves were responsible for the free class in Mississippi, cites the fact that “Of the 773 free persons of color in Mississippi in the year 1860, 601 were of mixed blood, and only 172 were black. Among the slaves this condition was entirely reversed. In this same year there were 400,013 slaves who were classed as blacks and only 36,618 who were mulattoes.” In regard to the mulatto character of the free Negro population, it should be noted that the association between the Indians and the Negro was responsible for mulatto communities of free Negroes in Virginia and elsewhere. In Florida the Seminoles were mixed with the Negroes to such an extent that the conflict with the United States was due in part to the attempt of Indian fathers to prevent their Indian-Negro children from being enslaved. There was also considerable interbreeding between the Indians and Negroes in Massachusetts. Many of the offsprings of these relations passed into the colored community as mulattoes. The predominance of the mulattoes among free Negroes was most marked in Louisiana, where 15,158 of the 18,647 free Negroes were mulattoes.

E. Franklin Frazier, The Free Negro Family: A Study of Family Origins Before the Civil War, (Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1932): 12-13.

The Free Negro Family: A Study of Family Origins Before the Civil War

Fisk University Press
1932
72 pages
E185.86 .F84
Source: University of Michigan via The Hathi Trust Digital Library

E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962), Professor of Sociology
Fisk University

CONTENTS

1. Origin, Growth, and Distribution of the Free Negroes
2. Character of the Free Negro Communities
3. The Free Negro Family
   • Selected Bibliography

TABLES

1. Growth of the Slave and Free Negro Population in the United States: 1790-1860
2. Distribution of the Free Negro Population According to States in 1830 and 1860
3. Number of Slaves and Free Negroes in the Total Population of Four Leading Cities in 1790
4. School Attendance and Adult Illiteracy Among the Free Negro Population in 16 Cities: 1850

MAPS

1. Percentage of the Negro Population Free in the Counties of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia: 1860
2. Distribution of Free Negro Families: 1830

CHAPTER I: ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE FREE NEGROES

A class of free Negroes existed in America almost from the time that they were first introduced into the Virginia colony in 1619. Contrary to popular belief, the free class may even be said to be prior in origin to the slave class, since the first Negroes brought to America, did not have the status of slaves, but of indentured servants. Contracts of indentured Negro servants indicate that the status of the first Negroes was the same as that of the white servants. Moreover, court records show that Negroes were released originally upon the completion of a term of servitude. The slave status, for which the white colonists had no model in England, “developed in customary law, and was legally sanctioned at first by court decisions.” Although it was not until 1662 that the first act of the Virginia slave code was passed, slavery by this time had apparently become established in practice. As early as 1651 we find a Negro, Anthony Johnson, who was probably enumerated among the indentured servants in the census of 1624, having assigned to him in fee simple a land patent for two hundred and fifty acres of land. Two years later this same man was the defendant in a suit brought against him by another Negro for his freedom from servitude, after having served “seaven or eight years of Indenture.” According to Russell, “The upper limit of the period in which it was possible for negroes to come to Virginia as servants and to acquire freedom after a limited period is the year 1682” Nevertheless, the free class continued to grow until the Civil War.

The free Negro population was increased through five sources: (1) children born of free colored persons; (2) mulatto children born of free colored mothers; (3) mulatto children born of white servants or free women; (4) children of free Negro and Indian parentage; (5) manumitted slaves. The increase in the free Negro population through the offspring of free colored parents, though difficult to estimate, contributed to the growth of this class until Emancipation. Likewise, the numerous cases of offsprings from white fathers and free colored mothers would indicate that from this source the free Negro population was constantly enlarged. Mulattoes born of white servant women and free white women were also a significant factor, for it was soon the cause for special legislative action. Virginia, in 1691, passed a law prescribing that “any white woman marrying a negro or mulatto, bond or free,” should be banished. Maryland, in 1681, provided in an act that children born of white servant women and Negroes were free. Eleven years later any white woman who married or became the mother of a child by either a slave or free Negro became a servant for seven years. Pennsylvania found it necessary to restrict the intermarriage of Negroes and whites through legislative action in 1725-1726, after having punished a woman for “abetting a clandestine marriage between a white woman and a negro” in 1722. This restriction was swept away, as well as the other restrictions upon the Negro, in 1780. Seemingly, mixed marriages became common, for Thomas Branagan complained:

There are many, very many blacks who . . . begin to feel themselves consequential . . . will not be satisfied unless they get white women for wives, and are likewise exceedingly impertinent to white people in low circumstances … I solemnly swear, I have seen more white women married to, and deluded through the arts of seduction by Negroes in one year in Philadelphia, than for eight years I was visiting (West Indies and the Southern States). I know a black man who seducted a young white girl. . . who soon after married him, and died with a broken heart. On her death he said that he would not disgrace himself to have a Negro wife and acted accordingly, for he soon after married a white woman . . . There are perhaps hundreds of white women thus fascinated by black men in this city, and there are thousands of black children by them at present.

It is difficult to determine to what extent the intermixture of free Negroes and Indians contributed to the growth of the free colored population. There was always considerable association between the Indian and Negro, both in areas given up to Indians and outside of these areas…

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