Under
the laws of Virginia from 1705 until at least 1785 the 'child of an Indian'
was legally
categorized as a 'mulatto', along with
persons of one-eighth or more African ancestry. In 1785 the term
'mulatto' was applied to persons of only one-quarter or more African ancestry,
thus allowing some persons to become white (or Indian) who had legally
been 'mulatto' previously. It is not clear if the 1705 definition
was replaced, as regards American ancestry, and court decisions and other
evidence are contradictory on this point. Nonetheless, in practice,
the term continued to be applied to virtually all reservation and off-reservation
Indians in tax records, census enumerations, and in the 'free negro' registration
book of at least one county.(F51) In 1866, after the Civil War, the
following language was adopted: 'Every person having one-fourth or more
Negro blood shall be deemed a colored person, and every person not a colored
person having one-fourth or more Indian blood shall be deemed an Indian.'(F52)
Here we see an apparent change, in that
the 'colored persons' category was made to include
unmixed Black Africans as well as mixed
persons and, of course, persons of three-quarters of
American ancestry if the other quarter
was African. This change was anticipated in 1860 when Virginia had
made the terms 'negro' and 'mulatto' equivalent in all statutes.
By 1866 both terms were to be subsumed under the category of 'colored'.
It should be noted that most local records
prior to 1860 differentiate between 'free mulattoes' and 'free negroes'
but there are instances where the distinction is not maintained.
The Native American communities were, of
course, vitally affected by these changes. Such
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communities might
now be divided into at least two categories of people: 'Indians' (with
less
than one-quarter African ancestry) and
'colored' (with one-quarter or more African ancestry).
What ensued was a one-hundred year struggle
to resist the 'colored' category, a struggle fought
with uneven success and one which served
to poison African-American Indian relations as well
as split communities, churches, and even
families. It is beyond the scope of this study to go into that story
but one remark should be made and that is that the Native American communal
resistance to the term 'colored' after the Civil War seemes to have been
based on the fact that
'colored', in the white mind, had become
equivalent to 'negro' and that its acceptance by Indians would have amounted
to voluntary change in ethnic identity.
In the twentieth century
Virginia broadened the term 'colored' to include all Indians with any trace
of African ancestry, if living off reservation, and with more than one-thirty-second
of African ancestry, if living on a reservation. For all governmental purposes
Indians were treated as 'colored' persons until recently, but in at least
one or two counties the lighter families were treated, in practice, in
a different manner from their relations elsewhere.(F53)
This same Chapter 9, pages 239
to 264, has additional headings for: The South Carolina Area
[5 pp.], North Carolina [1-1/2
pp.], Other Eastern States [2 pp.], States West of the Appalachians [1-1/2
pp]. Additional Chapter 9 subset headings preceding the regional US material
are: Latin America and the Caribbean [10-1/2 pp.]; The Term 'Colored' in
North America [1-1/2 pp.], and, following the US regional pages are Chapter
9 subset headings: Post-Civil War Usage [1/2 p.];
and, People of Color: A Unique
and Complex Category [2 pp.].
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Jack Forbes Biography
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