In the history of the slavery in the Americas, a free person of color was a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved. In the United States, such persons were referred to as "free blacks," though many were, in fact, mulattos. Technically a maroon was also a free person of color, but because maroons lived outside slave society, scholars regard them as a very different group.
The racial terminology used in Caribbean and Latin America slave societies since soon after slavery began, labeled such mixed-race groups more specifically.
Free people of color were an important part of the history of the Caribbean during the slave period. They were especially numerous in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which became independent as Haiti in 1804. In Saint-Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and other French Caribbean colonies before slavery was abolished, they were known as gens de couleur, and affranchis. They were also an important part of the population of British Jamaica, Spanish Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
Brazil was also home to large numbers of free people of color.
Africans in America/Part 3/Meeting of FreePeople of Color of Richmond, Virginia
The response of free fls to the question of colonization ranged from outright rejection to full embrace of the concept as a practical alternative to racial oppression in the United States.
In carefully framed language, a "respectable portion of the freepeople of color of the city of Richmond," Virginia met on January 24, 1817 to consider the position put forth by the American Colonization Society.
So long as we have no special rule in the Church, as to people of color, let prudence guide, and while they, as well as we, are in the hands of a merciful God, we say: Shun every appearance of evil.
This article, "FreePeople of Color," referred to in the Prophet's History, but not quoted in extenso anywhere by him, is here given entire, and is followed with The Evening and Morning Star extra, published on the 16th of January, 1833.
In it, however, the editor of the Star goes too far when he says that no freepeople of color "will be admitted into the Church." Stop Such was never the doctrine or policy of the Church.
Feeds |
Contact