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Yes, I'm aware of the mechanics of sexual relations. My question is how did blacks and whites reproduce together after slavery and before the Civil Rights Movement, roughly from 1865 and 1965. What were the social arrangements and situations that led to it? Did they have nuclear families? If so, how was it done since interracial marriage was outlawed?
Interracial marriage was NOT outlawed in all states. And in others it was not outlawed until the Jim Crow era. Frederick Douglas was married to a white woman.
There's not really one answer to this question.There were probably as many stories as there were individuals involved with people of different origins and races, just as is the situation today. Sadly, some were cases of coercion - but that was never true for all situations. There were love matches, marriages or unions of convenience, spontaneous "summer romances", unions for wealth or power...just as there are today.
Please feel free to share those stories here, its important to get different points of view, hope I did not give you the impression of trying to shut down debate.
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So gathering some more tidbits, as I stated before servile conditions in societies outside of the plantation Americas should be looked at on their own terms. Purchas makes this point clear (Purchas His Pilgrimes, Volume 2, pg. 870), the same could be said for Windus who explicitly points how unlike the Aqsa (& Saharan [Tell & Nile create just big oases]) system is to the "improve the race" eugenic/Nordic obsession of the Americas, though admittedly after the collapse of the Bandung generation, the plantation perspective has gained traction among the current generation globally (A journey to Mequinez, p. 138). Of course depending on the massah and other conditions, being a servile can be a dangerous situation.
Ibn Khaldun mentioned that the shores of the Berbers along the Bahr el Shamiya (Mid-Land Sea) stretched from the Maghreb to Iscandra and even to the port cities of Shams due to the naval assistance needed by Salah Din. It seems that the Sefardi & Moriscos followed in their footsteps since John Ogilby reported the latter extended to Turkey & Syria. This is supported by the comments of William Lithgow (The Totall Discourse, p.232).
Thus the again the various groups known as Turks/Moors/Portuguese like the Melanguens might have some basis in fact.
No, actually it wasn't at all. American history is very segregated. People of my granparents generation seldom had a conversation or any coorespondence whatsoever with people of other races.
It happened, but it was anamolous. It's being overstated today in discussions of history and genealogy.
For the most part, nobody was mixed and there were no happy interracial couples.
LOL on this post.
Actually in most urban areas prior to 1920 there was not a huge amount of segregation. As I shared earlier, I do a lot of genealogical research and got "into" history as a result of that and am very heavily focused on local history of the Great Lakes region in particular. There were no laws that required segregation by race in Ohio where I am from. I transcribe census records for projects and activities I am involved in and for my own personal enjoyment (I like boring, historical research lol).
In major urban areas of the Great Lakes, blacks and whites lived together. There was not a huge amount of black people in most major urban areas though prior to the Great Migration because most blacks lived in the south. The south had segregation, but not the Northeast or Great Lakes regions.
Of course there were towns that were very homogenous, so if your grandparents lived in a town that was 99% white, then they would not ever speak to a black person. But if they lived in an urban center that had a black population, they would have spoken and interacted with black people.
You also have to consider that there was "white" segregation based on ethnicity/nationality. Where I am from the Polish, Germans, Irish, and Hungarians had their own "sections" of towns. Those groups were the majority in the city, but they were not the only ethnicity in those neighborhoods. I am black and my family lived in the German and Polish neighborhoods from 1860 to 1930 when public housing was created.
It wasn't until the federal government got into housing that legalized segregation took place in the north, formerly "free" states.
So there was inter-racial marriages and relationships. I wouldn't be here if this was not the case, neither would my cousins who look and identify as "white" who have between 5-30% "black" DNA based on their genetic DNA testing. All of our "mixing" was rather recent and occurred within the past 100 years. I have uncles/aunts - my dad's half siblings who had a white mother and who were born in the 1950s/1960s.
It was not common, but it was not unheard of and especially not so in the Great Lakes region and in communities that had a lot of free people of color prior to the Civil War and afterwards.
Segregation came much more into play after the creation of the federal housing programs as stated above in "northern" states.
This coincided with what is considered the "First Wave" of the Great Migration whereas blacks from the south fled the south in huge numbers. The increase in blacks/negroes was upsetting to both the whites and blacks in northern areas. Many blacks felt that the "new" migrants made them "look bad" and there was a lot of internal debate between the old Boule/Bourgoisie black people in the north over the new southern, who they considered "ignorant" blacks.
The whites in the "north" felt that their job opportunities were being limited and that the migrants were criminally prone. As a result many whites, when the housing programs gained steam wanted to ensure that there were "negro" and "white" developments. This resulted in traditional black/white segregation that extended beyond the old ethnic segregation that previously dominated urban ares in the north and it limited inter-racial relationships from occurring, which was also a goal.
Inter racial relationships have always existed though in America and there have always been government involvement in stopping it from occurring until the Civil Rights era and the Loving case, which I believe this year is the 50th anniversary of that case.
So Tritone, if your grandparents grew up in the 20s-40s then it would stand to reason that they did grow up in a very segregated environment. But from 1865-1920, the country was not all that segregated. I knew my 2nd great grandmother who was born in the 1890s. Her father was a "mullatto" (half black/half white) and her mother was the child of European immigrants (from England and Ireland). She married a "tri-racial" man (both sides of his family were mixed with black, white, and indigenous tribes going back generations but they called themselves "colored" or later "black/negro") in the 1910s in the city I'm from and all of their children married various ethnicities including black, white and "mullatto." I have a very racially mixed family on this side as a result.
We are remarkably *not* mixed. In 350 years in the U.S surrounded by whites, african americans have only assimilated 15-20 European ancestry. That's remarkable, and it's unique in the new world. Most other black minorities in other countries mixed to such an extent that they disappeared in colonial times.
So for the most part the races did not mix. Americans are either extremely white, or very black. Interracial relationships are over-stated.
As for the origin of that 20% Euro admixture, it could only have happened during slavery. Most african americans, even those with high admixture, can not trace back to a single white ancestor after the civil war.
Very true...though I see the U.S. developing two distinct "kinds" of black people. The majority of blacks currently are around 20% white; the percentages generally being lower in the south and higher in the north (I was born in TX and have 11% European ancestry...so i'm pretty dang black for an 8th+ generation American). We're going to have one group of people like me that are mostly black and a second group that has either white parents or grandparents. My half-siblings and I share our father but their mom is white. All of them have kids that look "black"....a few shades darker than Will Smith. My siblings and nieces/nephews are comfortable with their white ancestry but view themselves as black people, kind of like President Obama.
We also have to keep in mind that black/white relations were not always framed in a Master-Slave dynamic during slavery. Many Scottish/Irish indentured servants both male and female would have relationships with black slaves and even have children. The larger plantation owners saw the potential that these groups could have if they joined together, so they came up with all sorts of laws and slave codes to put the poor whites just above the black slaves; ensuring that the two groups would never unite. Hell, we see the results of that strategy even today...and it still works.
There were definitely black/white sexual relationships post slavery. In slave times, an owner could have a house full of mixed kids and just put them out in the field or educate them a little...either way, he wouldn't face many repercussions if any. Post Reconstruction, black female/white male relationships had to be carefully hidden; often the products of their liaisons were sent "away" or adopted...sometimes even raised as white if they could pass.
My elders grew up in the South and literally never spoke to a white person even though they were surrounded by whites. There was almost no contact between the races in the past - especially in the period between reconstruction and the civil rights movement.
I'm not saying that it didn't happen at all. It was rare.
Race mixing is being greatly overstated. If it were as common as people want it to be, we would all be mixed today. We aren't.
I'm telling the truth.
My elders grew up in the South and literally never spoke to a white person even though they were surrounded by whites. There was almost no contact between the races in the past - especially in the period between reconstruction and the civil rights movement.
What part of the south are your elders from? Though no part of the olde south promoted inter racial social contacts, the south was not monolithic either.
Segregation and social norms against inter racial social contacts were militantly enforced in the Delta counties of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas. Ditto for "black belt" counties across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
Yet, attitudes could be more relaxed in coastal areas such as Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, Gulfport, Pensacola to say nothing of south Lousiana's Cajun / creole areas. Move thirty or so miles inland, from the coast, however, and one could enter a different world of militant enforcement. Some people used the description of "moderating breezes" to describe coastal areas.
There were also some other oddities. North Carolina was described as being southern, but not truly Dixie. The state had relatively loosely enforced segregation laws and relatively relaxed views on inter racial social contact. MLK picked the state for his first sit ins because he anticipated an easy victory to gain momentum (he was right).
Meanwhile, Baltimore, far to the north, had a reputation as being militant about no inter racial contacts. Strangely, Baltimore was arguably a northern city with Dixie attitudes.
What part of the south are your elders from? Though no part of the olde south promoted inter racial social contacts, the south was not monolithic either.
All these anecdotes are meaningless. You're still just pointing out exceptions.
All of recorded history, and modern genetic studies show that the races did not mix.
Amercan blacks are around 85% percent African 400 years later, and whites are purely European - grasping on straws trying to find Indian grandmothers that didnt exist.
There was a well documented legally enforced color-line in U.S history, partically after the civil war, and it worked.
For some reason people have some kind of odd fixation on race mixing when discussing history and genealogy even though it rarely actually happened.
This is why we don't look like Latin Americans. It distinguishes us from the rest of the new-world nations.
All these anecdotes are meaningless. You're still just pointing out exceptions.
All of recorded history, and modern genetic studies show that the races did not mix.
American blacks are around 85% percent African 400 years later, and whites are purely European - grasping on straws trying to find Indian grandmothers that didnt exist.
There was a well documented legally enforced color-line in U.S history, partically after the civil war, and it worked.
For some reason people have some kind of odd fixation on race mixing when discussing history and genealogy even though it rarely actually happened.
This is why we don't look like Latin Americans. It distinguishes us from the rest of the new-world nations.
One of the staple plot's of the western genre is the white woman who was captured by a native American tribe who has to be reintegrated into American society. John Wayne taking the niece home instead of executing her at the end of The Searchers being the best know example.Was it common enough to become the folk history passed down to many families, especially in Oklahoma, accounting for the Indian in their family tree? As my family has the oral history of the grandmother who was lynched around the turn of the century and her parents took in her black child until they married her off at 14 but without the public records to back up the claim.
All these anecdotes are meaningless. You're still just pointing out exceptions.
All of recorded history, and modern genetic studies show that the races did not mix.
Amercan blacks are around 85% percent African 400 years later, and whites are purely European - grasping on straws trying to find Indian grandmothers that didnt exist.
I never claimed that the US was the Carribean in regards to mixed races. At the same time, your statement is contradictory: Races did not mix. But... US blacks are 15% non African genetically. You also ignore the entire concept of creoles who are racially mixed but not counted as black.
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