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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Partus sequitur ventrem (lit. 'that which is born follows the womb'; also partus) was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of enslaved mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery.[1] The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
The doctrine's most significant effect was placing into chattel slavery all children born to enslaved women. Partus sequitur ventrem soon spread from the colony of Virginia to all of the Thirteen Colonies. As a function of the political economy of chattel slavery in Colonial America, the legalism of partus sequitur ventrem exempted the biological father from relationship toward children he fathered with enslaved women, and gave all rights in the children to the slave-owner. The denial of paternity to enslaved children secured the slaveholder's right to profit from exploiting the labour of children engendered, bred, and born into slavery.[2] The doctrine also meant that multiracial children with white mothers were born free. Early generations of Free Negros in the American South were formed from unions between free working-class, usually mixed race women, and black men.[3]
Similar legal doctrines of inheritable slavery also derived from the civil law, operated in all the various European colonies in the Americas and Africa which were established by the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Dutch, and these doctrines often carried over after the colonies became independent.[4]
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Cultures as diverse as Egypt, in Africa, and Korea, in Asia, have had the rule that the children of enslaved women are born slaves themselves; towards the end of the first millennium AD, most slaves in Egypt were born to enslaved women.[5] A few years later, in 1036, Korea passed legislation whereby the children of slaves were also born slaves.[6]
In 1619, a group of "twenty and odd" Negroes were landed in the Colony of Virginia, marking the beginning of the importation of Africans into England's colonies in continental North America. They had been captured from a Portuguese slaver, the Portuguese having begun the Atlantic slave trade a century earlier. During the colonial era, English colonial administration struggled to determine the status of the children born in the colonies, where their births were the product of a union between an English subject and a "foreigner", or entirely between foreigners.[7] English common law mandated that the legal place or status of an English subject's children was based on that of their father as the head of the household, known as pater familias. Common law stipulated that men were legally required to acknowledge their bastard children in addition to their legal ones and give them food and shelter—while they also had the right to put their children to work or hire them out taking any earnings, or arranging an apprenticeship or indenture so that they could become a self-supporting adult.[7] Child labor was a critical benefit both to the family headed by a father in England, and to the development of England's colonies—the child was as property to the father, or to those who stood in place of the father, but the child grew out of that condition as the child came of age.[8]
Regarding personal property (chattels), common law mandated that the profits and increase generated by personal property (livestock, mobile property) accrued to the owner of the chattel property. Beginning in the Virginia royal colony in 1662, colonial governments incorporated the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem into the laws of slavery, ruling that the children born in the colonies took the place or status of their mothers; therefore, children of enslaved mothers were born into slavery as chattel, regardless of the status of their fathers. The doctrine existed in English common law (which agreed with the civil law in such matters as livestock), but in England, the partus sequitur ventrem doctrine did not make chattels of English subjects.[9]
In 1656, multiracial woman Elizabeth Key Grinstead, then classified by an owner's estate as being "Negro" and thus enslaved, won her freedom lawsuit and legal recognition as a free woman of color in colonial Virginia. Key's successful lawsuit was based upon the circumstances of her birth: her English father was a member of the House of Burgesses; had acknowledged his paternity of Elizabeth, who was baptized as a Christian in the Church of England; and, before his death, had arranged a guardianship for her, by way of indentured servitude until she came of age. When the man to whom Key was indentured returned to England, he sold her indenture contract to a second man. The latter prolonged Key's servitude beyond the indenture's original term. At the death of the second owner of her indenture, his estate classified Elizabeth Key and her mixed-race son (who also had a white father, William Grinstead) as "Negro slaves" who were the personal property of the deceased. With William acting as her attorney, Elizabeth sued the estate over her status, claiming that she was an indentured servant who had served past her term and that her son was thus freeborn. This was eventually accepted by the Virginia General Court, though it overturned the decision after an appeal from the estate. Elizabeth took the case to the Virginia General Assembly, which accepted her arguments.[10]
According to scholar Taunya Lovell Banks,
children born to English parents outside the country became English subjects at birth, others could become "naturalized subjects" (although there was no process at the time in the colonies). What was unsettled was the status of children if only one of the parents was an English subject, as foreigners (including Africans) were not considered subjects. Because non-whites came to be denied civil rights as foreigners, mixed-race people seeking freedom often had to stress their English ancestry (and later, European).[2]
As a direct result of freedom suits such as those filed by Elizabeth, the Virginian House of Burgesses passed the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, noting that "doubts have arisen whether children got by an Englishmen upon a negro woman should be slave or free".[11]
After the American Revolution, slave law in the United States continued to maintain such distinctions. Virginia established a law that no one could be enslaved in the state other than those who had that status on October 17, 1785, "and the descendants of the females of them." Kentucky adopted this law in 1798; Mississippi passed a similar law in 1822, using the phrase about females and their descendants, as did Florida in 1828.[12] Louisiana, whose legal system was based on civil law (following its French colonial past), in 1825 added this language to its code: "Children born of a mother then in a state of slavery, whether married or not, follow the condition of their mother."[12] Other states adopted this "norm" through judicial rulings.[12] In summary, the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem functioned economically to provide a steady supply of slaves.[2]
By the 18th century, the colonial slave population included mixed-race children of white ancestry, sometimes classified as mulattoes (half Black), quadroons (one-quarter Black), and octoroons (one-eighth Black). They were fathered by white planters, overseers, and other men with power, with enslaved women and girls who were also sometimes of mixed race.[13]
Numerous multiracial enslaved people lived in stable families at the Monticello plantation of Thomas Jefferson. In 1773 his wife, Martha Wayles, inherited more than one hundred enslaved people from her father John Wayles. These included the six mixed-race children (identified as being three-quarters white) whom he fathered with his enslaved concubine Betty Hemings, a multiracial woman born of an Englishman and an enslaved African (Black) woman.[14] Martha Wayles's three-quarters white ("quadroon") half-brothers and half-sisters included the much younger Sally Hemings. Some years later, it is believed the widower Jefferson took Sally Hemings (then between 14 and 16 years of age) as a concubine. Over 38 years, he may have sired six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood. As their mother was enslaved, they, too, were enslaved from birth.[15][16]
Under Virginia law at the time, being seven-eighths European ("octoroon") would have made the Jefferson–Hemings children legally white if they had been free. Jefferson allowed the two eldest to "escape" and freed the two youngest in his will. As adults, three Jefferson–Hemings children passed into white society: Beverly and Harriet Hemings in the Washington, D.C., area, and Eston Hemings Jefferson in Wisconsin. Eston had married a mixed-race woman in Virginia, and both their sons served as regular Union soldiers. The elder son gained the rank of colonel.
In 1998, a Y-DNA test confirmed that a contemporary male descendant of Sally Hemings (through Eston Heming's descendants) shared genetic relation in the male line with Field Jefferson, a paternal uncle of Thomas Jefferson which provides evidence that Thomas may have been the biological father of Eston Heming Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson is documented as having been at Monticello each time Hemings conceived, and the historical evidence favors his paternity, but there are other possible suspects such as his younger brother Randolph.[15]
In the colonial cities on the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston, there arose the Creole peoples as a social class of educated free people of color, descended from white fathers and enslaved black or mixed-race women. As a class, they intermarried, sometimes gained formal education, and owned property, including enslaved people.[17] Moreover, in the Upland South, some slaveholders freed their slaves after the Revolution through manumission. The population of free black men and free black women rose from less than 1% in 1780 to more than 10% in 1810, when 7.2% of Virginia's population was free black people, and 75% of Delaware's black population was free.[18]
Concerning the sexual hypocrisy related to whites and their sexual abuse of enslaved women, the diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut said:
This only I see: like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, the Mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—every lady tells you who is the father of all the Mulatto children in every body's household, but those [Mulatto children] in her own [household], she seems to think drop from the clouds or pretends so to think ...[19]
Likewise, in the Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838–1839 (1863), Fanny Kemble, the English wife of an American planter, noted the immorality of white slaveholders who kept their mixed-race children enslaved.[20]
But some white fathers established common-law marriages with enslaved women. They emancipated the woman and children, or sometimes transferred property to them, arranged apprenticeships and education, and resettled in the North. Some white fathers paid for the higher education of their mixed-race children at colour-blind colleges, such as Oberlin College. In 1860 Ohio, at Wilberforce University (est. 1855) owned and operated by the African Methodist Episcopal church, most of the two hundred subscribed students were mixed-race, natural sons of the white men paying their tuition.[21]
the heritability of slave status was enacted as evidenced by the Matrilineal Succession Law (chongmopŏp) of 1036, which stated that the offspring of nobi shall inherit the status of the mother
Ten years later [referring to their 2000 report], TJF and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston Hemings.
Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838–1839
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Partus sequitur ventrem (lit. 'that which is born follows the womb'; also partus) was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of enslaved mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia. The doctrine's most significant effect was placing into chattel slavery all children born to enslaved women. Partus sequitur ventrem soon spread from the colony of Virginia to all of the Thirteen Colonies. As a function of the political economy of chattel slavery in Colonial America, the legalism of partus sequitur ventrem exempted the biological father from relationship toward children he fathered with enslaved women, and gave all rights in the children to the slave-owner. The denial of paternity to enslaved children secured the slaveholder's right to profit from exploiting the labour of children engendered, bred, and born into slavery. The doctrine also meant that multiracial children with white mothers were born free. Early generations of Free Negros in the American South were formed from unions between free working-class, usually mixed race women, and black men. Similar legal doctrines of inheritable slavery also derived from the civil law, operated in all the various European colonies in the Americas and Africa which were established by the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Dutch, and these doctrines often carried over after the colonies became independent.
James Madison Hemings (January 19, 1805 – November 28, 1877) was the son of Sally Hemings, a mixed race enslaved woman, and her enslaver Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Additional samples of Thomas Jefferson's hair were identified in the 21st century and were used to create a Jefferson DNA profile, against which those of known descendants were compared. The later DNA testing conclusively proved that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' sons, Madison and Eston. He was the third of Sally Hemings's four children to survive to adulthood. Enslaved since birth, in accord with the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation, where his mother was also enslaved. After some light duties as a young boy, Hemings became a carpenter and fine woodwork apprentice at around age 14 and worked in the joiner's shop until he was about 21. He learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages. Jefferson died in 1826 and Madison was freed in his will, after which Sally Hemings was "given her time" (an informal freedom) by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph. The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children has been the subject of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. At the age of 68, Hemings claimed the connection in an 1873 Ohio newspaper interview, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," which attracted national and international attention. Following renewed historical analysis in the late 20th century, and a 1998 DNA study (completed in 1999 and published as a report in 2000) that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Sally Hemings's youngest son, Eston Hemings, the Monticello Foundation asserted that Jefferson fathered Eston and likely her other five children as well. After Hemings and his younger brother Eston were freed, they each worked and married free women of color; they lived with their families and mother Sally in Charlottesville until her death in 1835. Both brothers moved with their young families to Chillicothe, Ohio to live in a free state. Hemings and his wife Mary lived there the remainder of their lives; he worked as a farmer and highly skilled carpenter. Among their ten children were two sons who served the Union Army in the Civil War, both of whom enlisted as white men in the regular army. Among Madison and Mary Hemings's grandchildren was Frederick Madison Roberts, the first African American elected to office on the West Coast. He served in the California legislature for nearly two decades. In 2010, their descendant Shay Banks-Young, who identifies as African American, together with one Wayles and one Hemings descendant, each of whom identify as European American, received the international "Search for Common Ground" award for work among the Jefferson descendants and the public to bridge gaps and heal "the legacy of slavery." They founded "The Monticello Community" for descendants of all of the people who lived and worked there in Jefferson's lifetime.
John Casor (surname also recorded as Cazara and Corsala), an indentured servant and later slave in Northampton County in the Colony of Virginia, in 1655 became one of the first people of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be enslaved for life as a result of a civil suit. In 1662, the Virginia Colony passed a law incorporating the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, ruling that children of enslaved mothers would be born into slavery, regardless of their father's race or status. This contradicted English common law for English subjects, which based a child's status on that of the father. In 1699, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law deporting all free Black people. But many new families of free Black people continued to be formed during the colonial years by the close relationships among the working class.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. This trade was operated by slave ships from both Europe and the New World. Some voyages used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, particularly in the early phases. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century, and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century. Most transported in the transatlantic trade were from Central and West Africa. In contrast to other slave trades, those taking slaves from Africa generally bought their cargo from West and Central African slave merchants. This applied to Europeans in the transatlantic trade and Arab slave traders supplying their own markets. While Europeans were involved in some raiding, this was uncommon and discouraged. The Portuguese built barracoons in their African slaving bases to gather newly purchased captives ready for the next ship to arrive. Northern Europeans operated some forts as African bases, originally for trading in gold, but later for slaves. However, the usual approach of North European slave traders was to use their ship as a base in which to gather their cargo. This meant these ships spent much longer on the African coast than Portuguese vessels, and the first slaves the slavers bought endured longer confinement on board. The Americas had, after Australia, a much lower population density than other inhabited continents. Exploitation by the European conquerors of these lands needed a workforce, but the sparse indigenous population was shrinking due to European diseases. Demand for labour could not be met by Europeans, who were reluctant to emigrate at this early stage. The solution was the same used for the sugar plantations of Madeira and Canary Islands c. 1450: slaves brought from Africa. Slaves were sold in the Americas to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, as skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first enslaved Africans sent to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, with legal standing similar to contract-based workers from Britain and Ireland. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their future offspring legally the property of their owners, as children born to slave mothers were also slaves (partus sequitur ventrem). As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and sold at markets with other goods and services, their prices determined by their health and expected productivity. The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, the United States, and Denmark. The largest slave trading ports were in South America, with New World-based ships probably carrying more enslaved people from Africa than those travelling in ships with a home port in Europe. The current estimate is that about 12.75 million Africans were loaded onto slave ships for transportation to the Americas. Of these, up to 2 million died during the voyage. About 8 million Africans were enslaved and remained on the African continent. Near the beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker
