Not a history to be proud of
There is often a dark side to genealogical records.
Something in a record or in a document we find that shines a light on something in ourselves, or our families, or our histories, that we are not proud of.
Those wonderful Mississippi school records highlighted yesterday?1
They have that dark side.
An ugly side that makes The Legal Genealogist‘s skin crawl.
An ugly side that should have us all looking mournfully at a past that isn’t all that far in the past.
An ugly side that we’re seeing too often even today.
Because as recently as 1927 some of the educable children in the school censuses of Mississippi weren’t simply called educable children.
Some of them were called worse.
Much worse.
On the 1927 school census of Lauderdale County, in a town called Meehan Junction, children were labeled as Colored.2
Doesn’t sit very well here in the 21st century, does it?
But that really wasn’t so bad.
In the Triplett School District in that same county, children were labeled as Darkies.3
Sounds like something out of the period of slavery, doesn’t it?
And even that wasn’t quite as bad as other children in that same school district in that same county, whose race was labeled Dark Blotches.4
Hard to imagine, isn’t it?
And even that — even that — wasn’t as bad as it got.
In that same county, in the town of Meridian, in the Tunnell School District, just 89 years ago, little children — children with bright faces and bright dreams, children as young as five years old — children were labeled… as Black Niggers.5
I have no words for those kinds of labels.
Even in genealogical records, they make my skin crawl.
As they shine that light on a dark side of the past… that isn’t all that far in the past.
SOURCES
- Judy G. Russell, “Educable children,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 10 Mar 2016 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 11 Mar 2016). ↩
- Lauderdale County, Mississippi, List of Educable Children, Meehan Junction (1927), Tallanatta West School District, p. 578; digital images, “Mississippi Enumeration of Educable Children, 1850-1892; 1908-1957,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 10 Mar 2016). ↩
- Ibid., Triplett School District, p. 584. ↩
- Ibid., Triplett School District, p. 585. And thanks to Shelley Murphy for pointing this out… ↩
- Ibid., Tunnell School District, p. 586. ↩
Heartbreaking, and we are still not past it. Sometimes it’s invisible to those of us with privileged lives simply because of the color of our skin and the fact that our immigrant ancestors came here long enough ago that the prejudice against them is easily forgotten. But in today’s political rhetoric and conflict over movements like Black Lives Matter, it’s still very much with us.
Thanks for posting this, Judy. It’s good to bring the dark side into the light to educate us all.
I guess those categories came with definitions with an appropriate blood percentage. Sheesh. In Virginia I have seen a very public case in which the children of one family were being denied public education based on hearsay about how much Negro blood they had. The State came to their rescue though by doing the genealogy and the math concluding they did indeed qualify to attend school with the white kids. How embarrassing it must have been for those children especially in that time.
As horrified as I was reading this, I kept anticipating that some of these children were going to be listed on a form entitled “List of Ineducable Children.” There was plenty of that attitude around, too.
Thankfully, our schools in Barren Co were not like that. We hold the honor of having the first black mayor in the south who was just superb. The children were noted “of color” or “negro”, but never with a derogatory term added. Our Superintendent of Public Instruction during this time was a woman – and she held office before she could even vote. She visited every school and demanded improvements when needed. The black schools were always in worse condition that the white schools but at least the teachers and students were treated with dignity. Shame on MS for doing this!
Judy,
Appalling, indeed. Yet not ten years ago, here in the “enlightened” North, I knew an elderly white woman from a very poor family who had married into a rich family refer to all persons of color as “colored.” I tried to gently tell her that the people she referred to by that expression would be insulted, and got a tirade. Sad, and worse than sad. She was at best cutting herself off from relationships with “those people,” and at worst contributing to the very disjunctions we’re seeing today.
Doris
In February 2015 in the City of Madison, Alabama, a man called 911 to report a “skinny black guy” walking on the sidewalk near his home and looking into garages. The man expressed his fears of leaving his wife alone in the house with the (skinny black) man walking around outside. Turns out that the “skinny black guy”, was a non-English speaking, 57-year old native of India, who had just arrived in Alabama to help his son and daughter-in-law care for their newborn baby. He ended up partially paralyzed after being body slammed to the ground by the Madison police officer who responded to the call. Would an unfamiliar skinny white guy walking in the neighborhood have frightened the 911 caller so much that he would call the police? If the police office had pulled up and confronted a 57-year old white man who couldn’t speak English, would he have body slammed him to the ground? Looks like the ugliness of the “dark side” is still lurking just below the surface of today’s society.
For me it brings a feeling of shame. That a nation great as ours ever permitted such a thing as slavery. Every nation has to bear the burden of man’s inhumanity to man, but the mark of a great nation is one who tries to fix the problem and become a kinder, gentler and more just nation! These reminders from history function to keep us on track.
I’ve been writing about the work done in Madison, Ind., and surrounding area for the Underground Railroad. It’s been eye-opening. Particularly “The Negro Exclusion and Colonization” section of the 1851 revision of the Indiana Constitution. I have always wondered why blacks didn’t stay in the smaller communities, especially in Kentucky. One of the footnotes states that the Kentucky General Assembly “shall pass laws providing that an free Negro or mullato hereafter immigrating to, and any slave hereafter emancipated in, and refusing to leave this State, or having left, shall return and settle within this State, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and punished by confinement in the penitentiary thereof.” Nauseating.
That was a very common provision in the laws of slaveholding states, but don’t overlook the onerous black laws of the north as well.
The KKK was strong in the North in the 1920s, able to do stuff like burning crosses in central Pennsylvania with no legal repercussions.
I totally agree. My 2nd cousin gave me a copy of the Durkee Genealogy book and in it our half great great uncle E.B. Durkee was a KKK member and policman whom killed a african american and got away with it. I was feeling pretty good about my ancestry till that point. Especially in light of recent events in the news. As well as that in my birth family tree my adoptive mom has two ancestors whom were slave owners a long time ago.