FREE BLACK POPULATION- AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

A

Discrimination Faced by Free Blacks

The first federal census in 1790 recorded nearly 60,000 free blacks, compared to more than 690,000 who lived in slavery. Although most African Americans lived in the South (about 90 percent), 27,000 lived in the North. South and North, free blacks tended to concentrate in urban areas, since cities afforded employment opportunities, greater freedom of movement, and larger concentrations of people to support churches, schools, and other organizations.

However, African Americans faced many obstacles and prejudices not encountered by whites, even in areas where slavery had been abolished. They were barred from most educational institutions, limited to the least desirable residential and farming areas, often prohibited from practicing trades and opening businesses, and generally segregated in public conveyances and public worship. Except in a few New England states where their numbers were small, black voting was restricted. In many states, especially in the Midwest, they could not serve on juries or testify against whites in court.

Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa prohibited black immigration, and Illinois threatened bondage for blacks who attempted to locate there permanently. In 1807 Ohio passed a series of 'black codes' requiring free blacks to post a $500 bond assuring their good conduct and self-support before they could settle in the state. Although these restrictive laws were irregularly enforced, free blacks lived under their constant threat.

African Americans' job opportunities were always restricted, and poverty was a continuing problem. Ironically, black skilled artisans were more likely to find employment in the South than in Northern cities where they faced competition from European immigrants. Most free black men in the North worked as servants, as day laborers finding temporary work where they could, or as sailors aboard trading ships or whalers. Black women most often worked as maids, laundresses, or cooks in homes, hotels, restaurants, or other businesses.

B

Free Black Communities

As early as the 1780s, African Americans in Northern cities established hundreds of mutual aid societies, churches, and fraternal organizations. Cooperative organizations provided benefits for burials and support for widows, orphans, the sick, and the unemployed. This aid was generally denied to blacks by white charitable societies. One of the first examples was the Free African Society, which was founded by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones in 1787. The same year Prince Hall organized the African Masonic Lodge in Boston, and lodges of Prince Hall Masons were soon found in Philadelphia, New York City, and throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Churches were among the first black organizations established; they were the central institutions serving the community's sacred, social, and political needs. Despite white opposition, some independent black churches were organized in the South, generally with both slave and free members but with free ministers. In the 1770s David George founded the Silver Bluffs Church near Augusta, Georgia, and George Liele and Andrew Bryan established the forerunner of the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.

In Philadelphia during the 1790s Jones and Allen established Saint Thomas African Episcopal Church and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church respectively. Mother Bethel, as it was commonly called, was one of the country's largest Methodist congregations, with 1300 members by 1810. In 1816 black Methodists from the Middle Atlantic states formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church and named Richard Allen the first bishop of this association. Other early black churches included New York's African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1796) and the Abyssinian Baptist Church (1808), and Boston's African Baptist Church (1805).

C

Early Abolitionist Efforts

By the 1830s, black communities had many groups organized specifically to oppose slavery and promote racial advancement. Schools and literary societies were common in the urban North, and virtually all black organizations were dedicated to abolishing slavery. In 1830 communities began sending delegates to an annual national Negro convention where they discussed strategies for abolition and racial advancement.

Although African Americans also worked with white allies in integrated antislavery organizations, they were determined to let their own voices be heard. They published political and historical pamphlets such as David Walker's militant Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829). In 1827 John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded the first black owned and operated newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in New York. Ten years later Cornish became editor of the New York newspaper, Colored American.

Continuing discrimination and legal restrictions on social and political rights prompted some African Americans to leave the United States. Some emigrated to Africa, going to places such as the British African colony of Sierra Leone and Liberia, an area settled by freed American slaves. Other destinations included the West Indies, Mexico, or Europe. Paul Cuffe, a wealthy African American and Native American sea captain and shipbuilder from Massachusetts, promoted colonization in Sierra Leone and took a group of black settlers there in 1815. In 1816 the American Colonization Society was formed to resettle free blacks and freed slaves in Africa. White slaveholders were among its leaders, and most African Americans were suspicious, rejecting their overtures. Still, by 1827, the Society had taken over 1400 volunteers, mostly free blacks from the upper South, to Liberia.

African Americans were also likely to seek fuller freedom and safety from kidnapping or reenslavement by emigrating to Canada where slavery was abolished in 1833. The vast majority, however, remained in the United States, tied to their homes by kinship and a sense of entitlement. They hoped to gain citizenship rights and were committed to fighting for the freedom of those still enslaved.