Posted on 02/21/2005 4:25:15 AM PST by WKB
Natchez conference explores Free Blacks in the Antebellum South 2/21/2005, 12:00 a.m. CT By KATHY HANRAHAN The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Natchez, a virtual epicenter of free blacks in Mississippi before the Civil War, this week is hosting a five-day seminar exploring the topic.
"Between Two Worlds: Free Blacks in the Antebellum South" begins Wednesday with speakers, movies and musical performances. The conference marks the 16th year the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration has hosted a convention of this caliber.
Carolyn Vance Smith, NLCC founder and co-chairman, said this year's theme was selected to coincide with the opening of the renovated William Johnson house in Natchez.
Johnson, considered by historians as Mississippi's best known free black during slavery times, owned a barber shop and bath house in Natchez during the early to mid 1800s.
"We thought this conference would be a good springboard to our community and to anybody that wants to come to understand who he was and how he fit in with the other free blacks and how they fit in with slaves, whites and Indians," Smith said.
Johnson's life was explored through books like "William Johnson's Natchez" and "The Barber of Natchez." His home, now owned by the National Park Service, will be officially opened on Saturday after renovations.
"Here in this town we have this guy who's not supposed to be there, that is a black person who's free living in the belly of the beast, living in the heartland of the slave South, contradicting everything that society stands for," said Ira Berlin, the conference's keynote speaker.
Berlin, a professor at the University of Maryland, hopes the opening of Johnson's house will spark interest in the subject of free blacks.
"Many people, perhaps most people, don't know there were black people who were free in the slave South or if they believe they were, think there were a couple of them," Berlin said.
More than a quarter of a million blacks were free in the South during the years preceding the Civil War, Berlin said.
"There were actually more free blacks in the South than there were in the North during these years," Berlin said. "They are very important to understand something about American society and something about black society."
In addition to Berlin, authors and historians from across the country will congregate to speak on topics including "Free Blacks in the Urban South" and Robert Penn Warren's book "Band of Angels."
Writer Alan Huffman of Bolton will speak on Sunday about conducting research in his home state and Liberia for his book "Mississippi in Africa." In the book, Huffman delves into the genealogy of Isaac Ross, a slave owner in Jefferson County who placed a provision in his will to set his slaves free.
Huffman was intrigued by the idea that more than 200 slaves left the Ross home and immigrated to an area of Liberia known as Mississippi in Africa.
"I guess the main thing that spurred me on was I knew that I was only hearing one side of the story. I was hearing the slave owner family's perspective and I just wanted to know what happened to everybody," Huffman said.
Traveling into war-torn Liberia, Huffman was able to track down descendants of Ross' slaves.
"When you start looking at African American history, you pretty much run into a dead end going backward after the Civil War because blacks were not in the census until 1870," Huffman said. "I learned a lot about the difficulty of tracing that aspect of our history."
Berlin and Huffman agree that Natchez is a culturally significant city in the history of free blacks.
According to the Mississippi Historical Society, nearly 75 percent of the free blacks in Mississippi resided in Natchez in 1840.
The Mississippi Colonization Society, a group of abolitionists and slave owners advocating the colonization of free blacks in West Africa, was also active in the city during that time, Huffman said.
The Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration receives a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council each year to present a conference.
"It started with a small mini-grant from us — seed money. It's blown up into this huge million dollar, hundreds of people program," said Barbara Carpenter, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council.
The conference is being held Wednesday through Sunday, with lectures at the Copiah-Lincoln Community College campus.
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First time I've heard that statistic.
Muslims were among the first Slave traders, walking the African slaves from West to East. Seafaring nations Portugal,Spain, Holland, France, England, then traded in slaves and transported them to the New Word.
The vast majority of the Salves entering the New World were found in the Caribbean and South America, the sugar cane plantation areas. Aprox. 5% of all the slaves eventually landed in the what is now the United States. The United States as a nation had little to do with the trading and transportation of Slaves from Africa. A student in the United States would never know this being educated in an American schools.
I am amazed that Muslim names are adopted by ethnic groups in the US, El this and Al that, considering that the Muslims were among the most prevalent Slave traders.
"There were actually more free blacks in the South than there were in the North during these years," Berlin said."
I knew that there were free blacks, and black slave
traders, but I didn't know this.
I have not heard of Mississippi in Africa, either.
Very interesting article, WKB.
Thanks bunches for posting it.
Looks like we focused on the same thing. ;o)
"There is a monument to black Confederate soldiers in Canton, Ms,..."
I didn't know that, either.
I've learned a lot this morning,
and it's still early.
"...that the PC'ers ignore also."
I DID know about that.
That's par for the course. ;o)
free diixe,sw
The government of France has entered into a contract for the supply of the islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique with ten thousand African immigrants. In the affair of the French immigrant vessel, the Regina Coell, it was declared on trial that, the majority of negroes on board were slaves who had been purchased from the Vey chiefs, and Prince Manna, at a rate of two dollars a head -- half cash and half British goods. They were put on board the French vessel with chains and ropes and thus confined.
I looked up the Vey (or Vye) tribe and found that it was a tribe on the west coast of Africa, apparently in the area of the Gallinas River in or near Sierra Leone and Liberia. Prince Manna lived along the Gallinas River and in an 1845 visit by the British denied selling British subjects as slaves. The Amistad slaves were from the interior but passed through the Gallinas area on the way to the New World.
An account of the Gallinas area written in 1837-38 says the following. [Source: Gallinas slave market].
Gallinas, in the latitude 7° 05' N and longitude 11° 35' W, the notorious slave mart of the Northwest Coast of Africa, is a river whose entrance and interior is not navigable but to boats and small crafts. Four years back, the shores of this shallow river were colonized by Spanish slave dealers who, while they remained undisturbed, accumulated several fortunes.The indigenes of this river, who are called Vye, were not numerous before the establishment of the Spanish [slave] factories, but since 1813 when several ships from Cuba landed their rich cargoes, the neighboring cities flocked to this river, and as there is much similarity in their languages, they soon became naturalized with the aborigines of its sandy and marshy soil.
Time brought into notice this slave mart, and merchants from Havana sent out agents to establish their deposits of goods and permanent barracoons. The double and treble call for slaves soon dispopulated the immediate Interior, when it became urgent for the natives of Gallinas to extend their wars further into the Interior. And in a few more years this river was surrounded with wars, but as the slave factories supplied them with powder and guns, they made headway against a multitude of enemies who, not understanding the politics of alliance, fought them separately and were generally repulsed.
I wish I would have known before hand, I would have attended. My dissertation is on black Union soldiers recruited in that vacinity.
It's commendable that this conference is being held.
Enticements like the following ad in the Vicksburg Herald newspaper might have played a role in recruitment. Caps, italics and spacing are roughly like that of the ad, which was reported in the April 4, 1865, Galveston Daily News.
RECRUITS FOR MASSACHUSETTS QUOTA
$625.00 Bounty
$425.00 CASH DOWN
The same bounty and pay to
WHITE OR COLORED RECRUITS.
All get sixteen dollars per month.
Choose your own Regiment or Company.
Liberal pay to agents for bringing recruits to me.
Lieut. Col. E. C. Kinsley,
Ass’t Provost Marshall of Massachusetts for the District of Mississippi
Headquarters at Vicksburg – Office on Washington Street near Clay, over Col. Saunders & Co.’s store.
The bounty was equivalent to 39 months of pay and was probably a big incentive for newly freed slaves in Mississippi, who doubtless didn't have great prospects for earning much money otherwise. Good luck on your dissertation.
When you consider the black codes of the north banned blacks from living in many of the northern states, it's not suprising at all. I would suggest looking at the codes from the home state of the northern tyrant as well as the 1859 Oregon constitution for just two of many instances...
Like DC2K, I learn a lot about Southern history on these threads. Unfortunately I have a hard time keeping my anger in check when it comes to blasphemous lies about my native soil & simply leave. Thanks vetvetdoug & billbears for the valuable info.
Many thanks!
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