The Origins and Fate of the Marion County Free Black Community

1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy D. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Marion County ◽  
Free Black

Memory Making on Parade

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-72
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Union Soldiers

This chapter clarifies that black communities experienced emancipation traditions in different ways. Given the large proportion of blacks in Natchez, and the region’s well-established free black community, it seemed probable that Natchez would experience a robust emancipation tradition. That was not the case. The grand 1867 Fourth of July parade in Natchez organized by the Union League drew a large crowd of African Americans, suggesting the beginnings of a bold emancipation tradition. Instead, public emancipation celebrations dwindled. By the time of the 1871 Decoration Day observance, leaders stressed reconciliation and a tribute to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, a far different message heard only four years earlier. The erosion of a black emancipation tradition resulted from the unusually close ties that existed between Natchez free blacks and white elites, and the fear among free blacks that it was in their best political interests to suppress such traditions.

The Free Black Community

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-44
Author(s):  
Jonathan Earle
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Free Black

Changes for Mrs. Thornton’s Arthur: Patterns of Domestic Service in Washington, DC, 1800–1835

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-379
Author(s):  
Stephanie Cole
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Snow Storm ◽  
Subsequent Capture ◽  
The City

Several hours before dawn on 5 August 1835, a Washington slave slipped into his mistress’s bedroom, axe in hand. Anna Maria Thornton awoke to see a drunken Arthur, her longtime house slave and the son of her trusted cook and maid, Maria, threatening her with, she believed, murder. Luckily for Mrs. Thornton, Maria was in the room and, “being fortunately awake, seized him & got him out” while her mistress sounded the alarm to the neighbors. Shocked and horrified, Mrs. Thornton recorded in her diary the attack and Arthur’s escape, subsequent capture, and criminal indictment (Thornton, Aug.—Oct. 1835). Some of Washington’s less reputable citizens reacted with hate and violence. In the ensuing days, out-of-work white mechanics gathered at the steps of the city hall, looking for a scapegoat for the disorder Arthur represented. On 12 August the mob turned its wrath on the vulnerable free black community. The “Snow Storm,” named for a victim of its destruction, free black Beverly Snow, was Washington’s most infamous riot. The crowd burned Snow’s restaurant, along with several other symbols of free black success (Werner 1986: 243–45; Curry 1981: 99–100).

The Making of a Liverpool Community: An Elusive Narrative

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-118
Author(s):  
Raymond Costello
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Diverse Backgrounds ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Freed Slaves ◽  
Continuous Presence ◽  
Black Immigration

Tracing the black presence in Liverpool, the oldest black community in Europe, is the subject of this chapter by Ray Costello. He begins by recounting and dispelling the ‘Windrush myth’—a misconception that the arrival of nearly 500 Jamaican workers on the SS Empire Windrush in 1948 was the beginning of the history of black settlers in Britain. Instead, black communities had existed in Britain for at least five centuries with Liverpool having the most continuous presence including enslaved black servants, freed slaves, sailors, children of African royalty attending school, and free Black Loyalists from the Americas. Costello describes the diverse backgrounds, cultures and languages of black settlers in Liverpool following each of Britain’s wars which obscured the true age of the community and perpetuated a view of local blacks as exotic foreigners. The failure to recognize the age and Britishness of an established black Liverpudlian population, Costello fears, preserves a belief in the recency of black immigration promotes the idea that assimilation and acculturation are the keys to integration and racial equity.

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