African American History in the SC Lowcountry: Free Negroes

[Music] [Applause] [Music] now the first question you'd ask three Negroes in a time of slavery how could that be but it was and the next question would be well how did they come to be free how did it happen that there were free Negroes during a time of slavery there were several ways in which they were freed we'd really have to look back to the time when the first group of Negroes were sold by a Dutch man of war in Virginia the first time for the English in the colonies and they were sold as indentured servants slavery had not yet evolved so to speak in the colonies but indentured servitude was what did the work in the colonies in the beginning the indentured servants and some of them were able to work off the indenture and receive the benefit of the indentured servants now the indentured servants works from five to seven years and at the end of that indenture they were given a small piece of land a small bit of money a new suit and they were on their own the unfortunate thing is though that the people to whom they were indentured were not always kind and in many instances they died before they were able to work off the so it was really in many ways a cruel system and frequently the indentured servants when they had a chance ran away and of course if they were white they could blend right into the population it would be difficult to find them but with the Negroes they could not blend into the population and they be a standout wherever they went so it was easier for the system of slavery to evolve for the Negroes then it was in some instances to keep the indentured servants indentured so over a period of time in all of the colonies that system evolved into slavery to the extent that they were indentured in perpetuity and their offsprings were also indentured now it was not unusual in many instances for indentured servants that were white and black to marry each other but that was not good for the evolution of the system of slavery because the question would be then what would the offspring be white or colored so then the states not the states the colonies moved into another stage of law in that just a drop of Negro blood made you a Negro and they passed laws against the marriage of black and whites so then you had isolated a dark-skinned group of unprotected and easily identified who made of the labor supply that was so badly needed in the colonies they were enslaved in perpetuity and they were bought and sold just like chattel chattel slavery so you had what evolved into a distinct system of slavery in the colonies now they also ran away but they were not able to blend in to the population as easily as were the whites now we come to the question of how they got to be free on different plantations there were different degrees of relationship and different qualities of relationship in some instances there were masters who were compassionate and appreciative of their slaves they were slaves but they recognized that the better they treated the slaves the more work they could get from them in addition to that those who lived close like the cooks like valets and butlers and maids constantly coming in contact with the owners of the plantation they had a closer relationship and in many instances came to have real affection for each other within that system one of the first instances in which a group of freedmen grew up there were some men who came to this country and worked very hard and acquired and worked their slaves very hard and recognized that they were able to acquire and become wealthy because of the work of their slaves and they would free them on their death maybe they would free a butler maybe they would free a driver but they are free they freed them out of appreciation for what they had done to help them acquire they freed them frequently in such a way as to set up trusts for them so that they would be protected for the remainder of their lives because it would be extremely difficult to live as a free Negro when the status of Negroes was that of slaves where would you go where would you live who would take care of you how would you exist for the day today that would become the question going back to the evolution of slavery there were some Negroes in this country then who had never been slaves they came as indentured servants they worked off the indenture and then they became Freeman where they were and that group their descendants would be those people who had never been slaves now that would be a very small group but that would make up a free group the group that would the group freed by the Masters would make up a free group at the last meeting of the class we were talking about the larger number of new ladders in this section and some fathers were very considerate of their children and they kept their children and read them as free and in time freed them and they freed them in many different subtle ways so that they can move right into the white population now children of such a union quote-unquote frequently were very fair in color not always they would sometimes take on the coloration of the mother and sometimes be of color in between the mother and the father and then sometimes they would be very white skinned if they were very white skin then it would be easy to send them north or some other place and free them there are many subtle ways in which that group became free and some of them left the region and some of them stayed and lived in the region now David has talked to you about this family that came from Africa and established itself in Georgetown they were all free one of the largest and most prominent free Negro families was in Sumter the Elliots but that would give us a group of freedmen there was another way in which they won freedom many of them were artisans blacksmiths silversmiths and worked in the selected arts and in many instances what the plantation owners did they would let them go to Charleston and work set themselves up and work in Charleston and they moved about as freedmen but the money that they made came back to the plantation owner and they gave the artisan some part of that many of these people were able to accumulate enough money to buy their freedom and some of them not only bought their freedom but they bought the freedom of their family members so there were several ways in which they became free now Georgetown was an active seaport Charleston was the most active seaport in the state and in some ways in the south so far as slave trading was concerned and in Charleston you had a very cosmopolitan population it had the largest Jewish population in the United States at one time and it had a very large free Negro population and the free Negroes according to what they did varied for being wealthy to very poor and in one instant we have a record of a freedman who went to the courts and asked to be enslaved again because he could not take care of himself and he needed someone to help him take care of himself that would be extremely unusual within the group that was division the extremely light-skinned Negroes seemed to think that they were very much better than the very dark-skinned Negroes that was a belief that was perhaps agenda and promoted by the Masters because they recognized the more they could divide the slave population the more secure would be their control and someone really ought to write a dissertation on group control when you think in terms of the large number of slaves over and against the small white population and they were able to control them by dividing them on the plantations we've mentioned the drivers the driver was perhaps the highest position of leadership and that would be quote-unquote for leadership that they had and they placed him over and against the fieldhands and kept them divided and then there were people who came into the colony we begin with a colony and later the state who were already free and then we want to see the growth of the free Negro population in South Carolina we are looking at the Charleston district we are looking at the city of Charleston we are looking at Buford and we are looking at Georgetown now notice that each of these were seaports in 1790 there were more than a thousand free Negroes in South Carolina now 1790 is important to us because we associate that with the first census of the United States the American Revolution was over the United States as a Democratic Republic had been established and this is what the first census showed and let's jump from 1790 down to 1860 1860 is important because 1860 would be at the beginning of the Civil War and in 1860 there were more than 9,000 almost 10,000 free Negroes in the state of South Carolina let's go back to 1790 however and look across there and notice that in Georgetown at that time there were a hundred and thirteen free Negroes in Buford a hundred and fifty three in the city of Charleston only 586 but in the Charleston district you had 950 and on down the line let's look at 1820 and we choose 1820 because that would bring us just two years yes two years before the Denmark Vesey insurrection and notice how the population had increased in the state there were six better than six thousand free Negroes in the state of that more than three thousand were in the district of Charleston and in the city of Charleston alone there were more than a thousand let us look and see that in Buford 181 and it's like sure looking straight across here and in you're looking at 1828 in Georgetown 227 notice how that population for Georgetown had gone up and down in 1790 a hundred and thirteen in 1800 only 95 but in 1810 a hundred and two and by 1820 227 but notice that in 1860 it had decreased and there were only a hundred and eighty-three we want to remember that after the Denmark Vesey insurrection the state passed laws prohibiting freeing Negroes and prohibiting free Negroes to come into the state because BC was free and he had grown largely on the three population as they planned the insurrection one so oneself into indenture in many instances but as the need grew for laborers as they came into the colonies all you had to do was to be so unwitting as to be young enough and strong enough and go to a pub in England and get drunk and then when you woke up you found yourself on the high sea in a ship pitching and that was called Shanghai they shanghaied a lot of young men out of England and then well you had to pay for your passage you're on your way to the new world so to work your passage off so notice how unkindly not only the Negroes were treated but all you had to do was be poor and peasant and stupid and unprotected but in most instances people sold themselves into indent you because they felt that in the free work in the new world after they worked their indenture off they were strong and healthy and they can make it for themselves and many did and some did not now in 1790 notice the state is divided into the Tidewater region that's the low country it's divided into the lower pine low Pine Belt the upper Pine Belt and the Piedmont and notice where the free Negroes were concentrated in the Tidewater section do you see that and are there any questions there were almost no free Negro Negroes in the Piedmont section but they were overwhelmingly concentrated in the Tidewater section let's look next at 1830 and in 1830 there came to be a few more Negroes in other sections but the Negro population the free Negro population had increased in the Tidewater section and then if you look at 1860 what do you see I don't seem to have an 18-6 did you put 1860 on forest please okay notice the concentration is still in the Tidewater section now are there any questions that you want to ask about that in some instances and I'm glad you asked that question because it varied throughout the period of slavery see at first as they became free in many instances it took an act of the legislature to free them and there would be no difficulty if a master specified in his will that Tom or Jane was to be free then lighter as the feeling grew against free Negroes then the state began to enact laws first that prohibited freeing the Negro second that prohibited free Negroes immigrating to this state and if you look at your first breakdown of free Negroes that I showed you here you can see how the population went up and down and you can see particularly in Georgetown County how it was affected by the enactments after 1822 any other questions on that but in many instances in Charleston they lived extremely well and even at a time when it was prohibited by state law to teach slaves to read and write in Charleston they had private schools now are there any other questions there yes 20 18 20 David said he said entrusted some of them are being educated in schools yes now their schools they were not state schools and they were not public schools these were private schools oh yes yes a part of that but it was more basic than that if they educated them because they were they were their children and they could afford it but I could see people winking at the whole thing if they knew that the reason for was to maintain a product that was required needed in the community well it could could have been I'm sure they had schools that we would now call technical schools in addition to you know schools for general education like teaching them a simple thing like reading and writing since the state um 17 Venice least another indicated that they were black who owned slaves in 1800 alive Holland on 60 XV the only Williams on seven in 1810 John Gardner on forty sleeves Eli's colors are 11 simian homes on the level a number of black on slave on into the 1830 1814 all up until the beginning of the civil war and that's where we come to a problem Michael Collins who had the large rights plantation in Santee and on a number of slave harder thief leaves make out ex-slaves make after the Emancipation Proclamation it was the problem before that most of them especially on the Robert Michael Colin plantation he had a problem feeding his family to feeding his slave the slave stayed in a lot of cases they had a place to go they were free when you free and the country you know nothing about where are you going so a lot of them stayed on the plantation with the plantation method with a Bremen you feed his clothes and keep a roof over our head and we will work that's what they did on Robert Michael Colin plantation but after the right after the Civil War he had a problem in feeling they're only asleep when he had a problem with feeding his family and that's when the Freedmen's Bureau came in on the you know old old Howard they were supposed to take care of the freedmen after they were free to see that they got a plate that they some etc and one year Robert Michael Collins had to go to the treatment viewer and borrow money so that he could get food for the slave and his family and I think the amount was about less than $50 but that gave him 100 pounds of us meet so many bushels of corn and along with that it wasn't a gift a bill came $49 and 53 cents and it took Robert Michael or a year to pay off that forty nine dollars and fifty three cents but one thing he learned at the result of what he went through during the civil war at the end of the civil war when all slave master had the signed contract with slave if they wanted sleeve to work for them Robert Michael found out that he could get sleeved to work by paying them a salary the first time he did he beat them a thousand dollars one year all his sleeve work on the plantation so it proves that paying salary would get work out of sleep now the free people in Georgetown during this period were not permitted to vote or hold public office but they had to pay a $2.00 tax every year it's brought about a problem in a lot of cases the list you have of the free Negro in 1860 endorse down the lint indicated those who had personal property and real estate if you figure that up in 1860 183 free Negro 46 Hoover mallanna's 77 were free Negro warm properly and real estate and the amount of real estate they all came to a total of nine thousand three hundred dollars and the amount of personal property they own came to nine thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars most of this information has gotten out of Brian both on the contribution of black ghost on political and economic would you tell them how that came to be written David please write book written by a group of black group of individuals out of Georgetown who were attending South Carolina State University dr. Bryant head of the full suspension partner of the institution and one recent research done on the his african-american history of Georgetown and a number of individuals I may have the names of some of them somewhere here so Jetta Smith through the park event and the Mary bars took it as a research to do on Georgetown is really research and came up with the entire history african-american history of Georgetown to that period so that he could use it evident visitation was worse but the information was handed down to me by one of them members of that group back in the lady had for a town as small as a County as small as Georgetown County a large number of three Negroes my concern would be now what did they do to make a living and how did they live I don't know that we have any specific information on that we just have the statistics I do however want to call to attention the Grimke family they an out of Georgetown they of Charleston so they would be of the Tidewater section I think I mentioned at the last meeting of the class there was a judge Grimke in Charleston who had two daughters Angelina and Sarah and a son and each of those daughters became abolitionists one of the things that the literature frequently is eloquently silent on is the activity of southern abolitionists after the abolitionist movement started the largest number of societies were in the south and I must bring you some information on that but in many instances they would have to work underground but it's testimony to the fact that there were southerners who were actively opposed to slavery I mentioned that a previous meeting of the class that for this county and Charles to Charleston James Pettigrew and Joel Poinsett were unionist they were among the men who felt that it was stupid to secede from the union that it was stupid to continue to support slavery now the grim keys are very important because of their brother I think I also previously mentioned that he had children with one of the slave women on one of their plantations now the judge was a slave owner but his daughters became very active abolitionists in the Philadelphia area they found out that their brother had children with this slave woman and these young men had made their way to Philadelphia and those women supported them and helped them to become educated and they became very prominent men I don't know as much about the specifics of the life of the free Negro in Georgetown County as I'd like to know but the statistics show the record shows that there were there was a large number on checking all of the census if you found that there she loved them if enemy mutlar were a bear living they could do a lot of thing they could they were good with both ships they can make a sale wait on table and things of that nature very few have any made of anything about their living and the bow affluent quote-unquote of the free Negroes themselves owned slaves sometimes only one more frequently not at all but among the four slave owners now are there any questions no questions all right with that we'll go to the Civil War [Music] you

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Keywords: +African American History, Lowcountry, free negroes, Florida Yeldell, David Drayton, American History

Id: Qu6xewqXpk0

Length: 39min 50sec (2390 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2018