Talk:Free Negro

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Free Negro was a non-citizen who lived in the United States prior to 1870. Some Free Negroes were former slaves, usually called "Freedmen." Other Free Negroes were the offspring of former slaves; who were free since birth. If a slave bore a child, the child was also a slave; if a Free Negro bore a child, the child was a Free Negro (but not a citizen of the United States). In general, Free Negroes did not pay taxes, vote, or own land. Many Free Negroes lived by toiling at work which was physically demanding, while Americans paid taxes, voted, and owned land. Typically, Free Negroes paid rent or lived in poorhouses. Superslum 20:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of Freeman and Freedman

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

In the most general acceptance of these terms, the first implies one who has inherited the full privileges and immunities of citizenship; the second, one who has been delivered from the restraints of bondage, but who, usually is not placed in a position of full social or even political equality with one who was born free.

With the Romans the equivalent for freeman (liber homo) comprehended all classes of those who were not slaves; but the distinction was preserved by the application of the term ingenuus to him who was born free, and of libertinus to him who, being born in servitude, was emancipated. [1]

The idea of a freeman was by no means peculiar to the Roman or Romanized population of Europe; on the contrary, it belonged to the constitution of society in all the Indo-Germanic nations. Among those branches of them commonly known as Teutonic, it was generally based on the possession of some portion of the soil. [2]

Thus in Anglo-Saxon England "the freeman was strictly the freeholder, and the exercise of his full rights as a free member of the community to which he belonged became inseparable from the possession of his holding in it." [3] Superslum 20:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The Free Negro and the Freeman in the United States lived amongst land-owners who were Americans because of their ownership of land. Land-owners exercised their full rights as free members of the community to which they belonged (as in England). Free Negroes did not own land, therefore, they were not citizens. Superslum 20:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

757,208 Negroes (mostly slaves) were counted in the first census of the United States in 1790. The number accounted for 19.3% of the total population. (An estimation made by me, is that the number of free Negroes was roughly 30,000 in 1790). The number of land-owners amongst them was approximately zero, therefore, the numbers of citizens amongst them was approximately zero. Superslum 20:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal standing

Free Negroes were legally called Free Negroes. Mulattoes were a type of Free Negro that appeared on legal documents in some of the States of the United States. Slaves, also, appeared on legal documents.

Legal documents are a part of the history of the United States, therefore, they cannot be made to vanish into thin air simply by changing Free Negroes into "free blacks." Who are the odd people who insist on describing Free Negroes inaccurately, stupidly, and casually? Superslum 20:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)