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, free, people and/or color:
“Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“It is not a piece of fine feminine Spitalfields silk—but is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables & hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book—on risk of a lumbago & sciatics.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Actors work and slave—and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.”
—Helen Hayes (1900–1993)