8.7.4

Compare the lives of and opportunities for free blacks in the North with those of free blacks in the South.
             “Their educational attainment was limited, their social development was thwarted, occupations were closed to them, housing was denied to them, personal safety eluded them, and basic hum dignity was begrudged them,” narrates Leonard Curry, a historian. Free blacks could get less respect, the state of being regarded with honor or esteem, than Rodney Dangerfield. There are actually three regions in which “free Negroes” were put. These regions are known as the North, Upper South and Lower South (Deep South).
             Freedom, Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression, was abundant and scarce at the same instant depending on where you were from. It was predominantly found in the North where 75 percent of the blacks there were free in 1810. This territory contained all the most boisterous aristarches. Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England states made up what was Northern. Tobacco Plantations packed the Upper South where Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Washington D.C. currently take residence. 10 percent of blacks were free here around 1810. Deep South supported rice and cotton plantations in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana where only 4 percent of the black population was free.
             Finding a vocation was most operose, strangely enough, where freedom was most transcendent. A occupation was incredibly arduous to come by in the North. Domestic service and subsistence farming were jobs the majority was entitled to. Lower Southern jobs came around more effortlessly than anywhere else as there were so sporadic free blacks anyway (2 percent in 1860). Creoles or mulattoes as they were referenced as were rich and light-skinned. They looked down on the darker toned blacks. Creoles themselves also possessed slaves. Those that were free and not aristocrats became day laborers and domestic servants. Carpenters, masons, mechanics, and tailors were other jobs open to them. In the Upper South, job hunting was also difficult but not more so than in northern states. Thousands worked as blacksmiths, barbers, and shoemakers. The preponderance of free blacks worked alongside slaves as farmhands, casual laborers, and factory hands, because of this actualization, free blacks and slaves were more physiographically and psychologically connected with slaves. They supported many rebellions against slavery. These rebellions affrighted whites.
             Jobs weren’t all that was hard to come by. Northern blacks were excluded from most public schools. The Upper South gave blacks the least education and money. Large urban cities were mainly where free blacks abided while the Upper South placed free blacks in more agronomic precincts.
             There being free blacks threatened white enslavement and proslavery whites were apprehensive. Everywhere, free blacks were segregated, forced to live in their own tiny communities, schools, hospitals, churches, businesses, meetinghouses, homes, prisons and cemeteries were instituted. White mobs destroyed many of these even after the free blacks moved away like they were forced to, mainly in the North.
             From what respect, the state of being regarded with honor or esteem, free blacks were given during the early and mid 1800’s, perhaps attaining freedom by going through martyrdom had not been too desirable. The north was more for freedom only because immigrants, women, and children could be attained for almost the same cost (wages). Free blacks were not at all sympathetic in the Deep South as they were in the Upper South. The diversities continue as I end this explication on how the west was different.


More Information:

   1.    http://www.africana.com/Utilities/Content.html?&../cgi-bin/banner.pl?banner=Education&../Articles/tt_331.htm
          This site has many quotes from famous African-Americans and gives very in depth information on different parts of black society between 1619 and 1860.

   2.    http://www.gliah.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=59
          Here you can find the history of slavery in general with an emphasis on 1600-1860.

   3.    http://www.gliah.uh.edu/resource_guides/content2.cfm?tpc=12
          This site has a flurry of references, although I tried not to do so, just about anywhere I went that was helpful, I later found it here also (sites associated with myhistory.org no longer work).

   4.    http://www.gliah.uh.edu/modules/slavery/historiographical_essay.html
          At this site, you can read about the history of studying the history of slavery.

   5.    http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/wahl.slavery.us.php
          This site gives you all the numbers for the subject at hand.