Free People Of Color
A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved. In the United States, such persons were referred to as "free Negroes," though many were of mixed race (in the terminology of the day, mulattos, generally of European and African descent).
Free people of color was especially a term used in New Orleans and the former Louisiana Territory, where a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. There were also free people of color in Caribbean and Latin American slave societies. There colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to appearance and to the proportion of African ancestry.
Read more about Free People Of Color: History, Definition, Economic Impact, Post-slavery, Notable Free People of Color
Famous quotes containing the words free, people and/or color:
“Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“I know. That’s what makes us tough. Rich fellows come up and they die. Their kids ain’t no good and they die out. But we keepa comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out. They can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, cause we’re the people.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
Again again with its pointless sound
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)