Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and Choice, The

Abstract

Under the jurisprudence of slavery as it stood in 1806, one's status followed the maternal line.A person born to a slave woman was a slave, and a person born to a free woman was free.In that year, three generations of enslaved women sued for freedom in Virginia on the ground that they descended from a free maternal ancestor.'Yet, on the all-important issue of their descent, their faces and bodies provided the only evidence they or the owner who resisted their claims could bring before the court.The appellees ... asserted this right [to be free] as having been descended, in the maternal line, from a free Indian woman; but their genealogy was very imperfectly stated ... .[T]he youngest ... [had] the characteristic features, the complexion, the hair and eyes ... the same with those of whites .... Hannah, [the mother] had long black hair, was of the right Indian copper colour, and was generally called an Indian by the neighbours 2 Because grandmother, mother, and daughter could not prove they had a free maternal ancestor, nor could Hudgins show their descent from a female slave, the side charged with the burden of proof would lose.

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