Becoming Black, Or White Or Red: Defining Racial Groups in the Early Colonial Period
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Becoming “Americans” Always One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Becoming Black, or White or Red: Delineating Racial Groups in the Early Colonial Period (1609 – 1750)
Fork by fork, step by step, option by option, America or, to be more precise, the men who spoke in the name of America decided it was going to be a white place defined negatively by the bodies of the reds and the blacks. And that decision… foreclosed certain possibilities in America.
— “The Road Not Taken,” by Lerone Bennett, Jr., Ebony (Aug. 1970)
1619 – On July 30, 1619, the first representative assembly in North America convened in Jamestown VA; days later, in August 1619, “twenty negars” were off-loaded from a Dutch mer- chant ship and bartered for food and water.
1641-1750 – Slave Codes legalize African bondage in perpetuity: Massachusetts was first in 1641, followed by Connecticut in 1650; Virginia 1661; Maryland 1663; New York and New Jer- sey 1664; South Carolina 1682; Rhode Island and Pennsylvania 1715; Georgia 1750; and an amended Virginia code (1705) barred freed blacks from residing the colony.
1676 – Nathaniel Bacon forged a military force of black and white indentured servants intent on toppling Virginia’s landed aristocracy. Though eventually suppressed, Bacon’s Rebellion posed the question of how to avoid similar multi-racial alliances of the poor in the future. By declaring Africans slaves in perpetuity, while whites might rise from the status of servant to citizen, the propertied class bridged the separation of social status and material circumstances by establish- ing an alternative identity, “white men.” Service in all-white militias became an obligation of cit- izenship; these militias waged war against the Indians and suppressed slave rebellions.
Forging a Nation: Race and the Construction of “We the People” (1776 – 1860)
In its first words on the subject of citizenship, Congress in 1790 restricted naturali- zation to ‘white persons’…From the earliest years of this country until just a gen- eration ago, being ‘a white person’ was a condition for acquiring citizenship.
— Ian F. Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race (1996)
1777-1865 – In the South, slavery was a racial dictatorship denying blacks—slave and free— most civil and political rights; even in the north, freed blacks were generally barred from voting, serving on juries or in the state militia, negotiating legal contracts, or testifying against a white man in court. 1787 – US Constitution avoids explicit mention of slavery1, but institutes a series of protections for Southern slave owners including: the Electoral College guaranteeing the election of southern presidents; the Enumeration Clause, or “3-fifths rule” (art.1, ss.2) increasing Congressional rep- resentation for slave states; barring Congressional action against slave importation until 1808 (art.1, ss.9); and a Fugitive Slave Clause addressing the matter of extradition for runaways resid- ing in “free states” (art.4, ss.2)
1850 – Fugitive Slave Act extends previous Constitutional provisions safeguarding the owner- ship of humans as property by requiring cooperation of civil authorities in the Northern “free-s- tates” to assist in the return of runaway slaves; act facilitates a rash of kidnappings of freedmen “sold South” into bondage
1857 – The US Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case declares that, “In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the declaration of independence… neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descen- dants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...” (USSC at 60 US 393, 1857).
The First Reconstruction: Freeing the Slaves, Reframing Supremacy, Creating Separate and Unequal (1865 – 1954)
[T]he central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on who the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture.
— W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
1865-70 – Following the Union victory, some four million black in bondage were freed by the 13th Amendment barring “involuntary servitude” (1865), and granted citizenship and the vote by the 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) amendments. In 1865, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bu- reau, which built public schools, secured loans for land purchases, and provided general relief. But, with the end of regional hostilities, the outpouring of support for former slaves soon ebbed. The Ku Klux Klan was organized (1867), launching a campaign of terror designed to block the exercise of black civil rights and forcing the federal government to outlaw KKK membership (1870); however, white-dominated southern legislatures soon enacted restrictive Black Codes, laws imposing severe restrictions on the exercise of black civil and political rights.
1896 – in its Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, US Supreme Court endorses “Jim Crow” segregation, finding that whites had the right to demand “separate” accommodations or amenities—provided that blacks were offered “equal” services. “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or abolish distinctions based on physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in
1 Africans in bondage were vaguely referred to as: “such persons…held to Service or Labour.” accentuating the difficulties of the present situation…If a race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plain” (163 US 537, 1896). The High Court later upheld state laws disenfranchising black voters (1903).
The Second Reconstruction: Erasing the Color Line, White Back- lash, and Defending Color-blind Racism (1955 – Present)
Since Brown, steady efforts have been made to give the segregation story a new reading, this time centering on remedy, or on ‘affirmative action’ favoring those previously discriminated against. But the principal new story is about protecting whites against the desegregation remedies mandated by the courts and legisla- tures, with individual whites depicted in the new narrative as victims…”
— Jerome Bruner, Making Stories: Law Literature, Life (2002)
1955-1964 – NAACP lawyers under Thurgood Marshall convince the US Supreme Court to reverse itself on “Plessy,” discarding the doctrine of “separate-but-equal” in favor of reaffirming 14th Amendment guarantees of “equal protection”; a growing movement for social justice forces the liberal political establishment to support black demand for civil rights, leading to the eventual dismantling of Southern Jim Crow—finally completing what Dr. King would call the “first phase” of the struggle2
1965 – Pres. Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act and sends the first contingent of fed- eral poll examiners south to monitor registration and voting procedures.
2 MLK (1967) noted that the “second phase,” moving beyond symbolic rights to material equality, was stalled as the mass movement’s white allies “quietly faded away.”