In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the question of what it meant to be Black in the United States was largely obvious but still diverse in its answer. In 1830, of the nearly 13 million people in the United States, 2 million were enslaved. This large ratio, combined with an increase in slave rebellions, like those led by Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, had white enslavers on edge, as they realized that aggressive fights for freedom by the enslaved would become more frequent—and more violent—until freedom was granted. Although these rebellions often ended tragically, they gave many Black people hope. The desire for freedom spread across slave states, as some former slaves successfully reached the temporary promised land: free states. During this time the population of free Black Americans, particularly in the northern and western United States, was growing. However, most Black Americans remained enslaved, leading those who were experiencing freedom—and the white people who supported them—to increase their attention to arriving to the place where all were free. Freedom from slavery was certainly the initial goal for Black people. But as the movement to eradicate slavery grew, a new question arose: what would it mean to be Black in a postslavery America?
During the late 1830s, Black thought leaders, businesspeople, clergy, and many of their white counterparts gathered to answer this burgeoning question at the National Negro Conventions, events whose popularity was made known mainly through the efforts of the press. Two specific publications—Freedom’s Journal, the country’s first Black newspaper, and The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison—played major roles in gathering Black leaders from across the nation to answer this fundamental question while also seeking solutions for more complex ones. These publications, by elevating the National Negro Conventions, allowed Black people and abolitionists to form networks to move America toward freeing—and advancing the lives of—enslaved people, with a level of urgency and efficiency that was previously unseen. Without them, influential minds could hardly have gathered to develop the strategies required for Black people to receive the justice they had long been denied. This model would be replicated decades later, when the Black press played an influential role in pointing leaders in the Black community (and those who supported them) toward the NAACP’s national conventions; the National Urban League’s State of Black America; and other events aimed at zeroing in on the most pressing issues facing Black Americans.
One of the most significant contributions of the National Negro Conventions was their vision to encourage the continued gathering of those who cared about the future of Black people in the United States and beyond. Those in attendance gave much attention to the freeing of Black people, but they also recognized that there were issues plaguing the Black community beyond the need for emancipation. They gave significant attention to topics related to the global fate of Black people and internal conflicts within the Black community related to gender and even diversity of political thought. For them, freedom for Black people went beyond freedom from slavery. It also meant having their humanity acknowledged and having the ability to live their lives to the fullest.
The meaning of freedom pertaining to Black people is a question much older than the United States. Quests to determine and experience a free life for Black Americans reach back to the earliest colonial settlements. Yet centuries later, de facto segregation continues, mass incarceration remains prevalent, and significant gaps between the lived experiences of Black and white people in health, education, and wealth persist. The question remains prevalent today and in many ways has taken on deeper significance. Although slavery has been legally abolished, freedom for many Black Americans seems like a far cry from the vision of freedom described by the founders in the Constitution.
1839–1844
RACIAL PASSING
Allyson Hobbs
October 4, 1842
George Latimer and his pregnant wife, Rebecca, made a desperate leap for liberty. They escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, hiding in the hold of a ship for nine hours. They stole away to Baltimore, then to Philadelphia, before arriving in Boston.
Four days after Latimer’s escape, Latimer’s owner, James Gray, described Latimer’s complexion as “a bright yellow” in an advertisement. Latimer was able to pass as white, so he “travelled as a gentleman” while his wife traveled as his servant. While boarding the ship in Norfolk, Latimer walked by a man he knew. He quickly pulled his Quaker hat over his eyes, entered the first-class cabin, and was not recognized.
In antebellum America, runaway slaves wore white skin like a cloak. Racial ambiguity, appropriate dress—Latimer’s Quaker hat, for instance—and proper comportment could mask one’s enslaved status and provide a strategy for escape. Once Latimer was seated in the first-class cabin, it would have been impolite for a passenger or a conductor to question his racial identity.
Tactical or strategic passing—passing temporarily with a particular purpose in mind—was born out of a dogged desire for freedom. In later historical periods, this type of passing would allow racially ambiguous men and women to access employment opportunities, to travel without humiliation, and to attend elite colleges. In the antebellum period, passing was connected to a larger struggle and to strivings for freedom.
The countless men and women who passed successfully demonstrate that even in the most totalizing systems, there is always some slack. Passing was an expedient means of securing one’s freedom, and in its broadest formulation, it became a crucial channel through which African Americans called for the recognition of their humanity. The desperate acts of enslaved men and women were not freighted with the internal conflicts, tensions, or moral angst of other historical periods. Surrounded by loss, enslaved people were motivated by a desire to be reunited with their families, not to leave them behind. Many runaway slaves neither imagined nor desired to begin new lives as white. They simply wanted to be free.
Latimer had been beaten severely while he was enslaved, sometimes in front of his wife. When he was returning from the market with Rebecca, his owner struck him with a stick across his jaw, bruising his skin. His owner followed Latimer to a store, where he hit him with a stick nearly twenty times. Latimer said that if he were captured, he expected to be “beaten and whipped 39 lashes, and perhaps to be washed in pickle afterwards.”
“We all know on a certain, almost intuitive level that violence is inseparable from slavery,” historian Nell Painter has written. “We readily acknowledge the existence of certain conventions associated with slavery: the use of physical violence to make slaves obedient and submissive, the unquestioned right of owners to use people they owned in whatever ways they wished.”
Shortly after Latimer and his wife reached Boston, James Gray arrived in the city and had Latimer arrested on a charge of larceny. Nearly three hundred Black men gathered around the courthouse to prevent Latimer from being returned to Gray, who planned to send Latimer back to Virginia. A chaotic meeting in Faneuil Hall roused public sympathy for Latimer and sharpened abolitionists’ demands for legislation to protect fugitive slaves.