The mulatto advantage: The biological consequences of complexion in rural antebellum Virginia

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 21-46

  Bodenhorn, Howard ^a,b  

^a LAFAYETTE COLLEGE   (United States)

^b NBER ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27144511893     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/00221950260029002     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Langston Hughes, Short Stories (New York, 1996).
2. Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York, 1984), 145;
3. Claudine Chiawei, Half and Half (New York, 1998).
4. Several historians have made or repeated the claim about light-complected African-Americans in the West Indies and South America. See, for example, Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters (New York, 1974), 183-216;
5. John G. Mencke, Mulattoes and Race Mixture: American Attitudes and Images, 1865-1918 (Ann Arbor, 1979), 10;
6. Williamson, New People, xiv;
7. Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville, 1996), 78;
8. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York, 1997), 84-85.
9. Tommy Bogger, Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom (Charlottesville, 1997), 104;
10. Mencke, Mulattoes and Race Mixture, 2;
11. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), 182.
12. Johnson, Black Savannah, 16-17, makes a forceful case for the importance of complexion in the Lower South and how it was reinforced by white attitudes.
13. Bodenhorn, "The Complexion Gap: The Economic Consequences of Color among Free African Americans in the Rural Antebellum South," Advances in Agricultural Economic History, II (forthcoming 2002).
14. Jane Purcell Guild, Black Laws of Virginia (New York, 1969), 21.
15. Jane Purcell Guild, Black Laws of Virginia Ibid., 23-24.
16. James Hugo Johnston, Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South, 1776-1860 (Amherst, 1970), 178.
17. Johnston reports several other cases besides that of Ann Redman. Guild, Black Laws, 58.
18. Donald L. Horowitz, "Color Differentiation in the American Systems of Slavery," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, III (1973), 509-541.
19. Carl N. Degler, Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York, 1971), 194-195.
20. F. James Davis, Who is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park, Pa., 1991), 31-34;
21. Degler, Neither Black nor White, 241-243.
22. See also Mencke, Mulattoes, ix-x.
23. Guild, Black Laws, 29;
24. Williamson, New People, 13.
25. Mencke, Mulattoes,
26. and Horowitz, "Color Differentiation," provide variations on this argument about different attitudes of Upper and Lower South whites.
27. Degler, Neither Black nor White, 102.
28. Two valuable anthropometric collections are John Komlos and Timothy Cuff (eds.), Classics in Anthropometric History (Katherinen, Germany, 1998);
29. Richard Steckel and Roderick Floud (eds.), Health and Welfare during Industrialization (Chicago, 1997).
30. Steckel, "Height and Per Capita Income," Historical Methods, XVI (1983), 1-7.
31. James M. Tanner, "Growth in Height as a Mirror of the Standard of Living," in Komlos (ed.), Stature, Living Standards, and Economic Development (Chicago, 1994).
32. Phyllis Eveleth and Tanner, Worldwide Variation in Human Growth (Cambridge, 1990), 176;
33. Floud, "Heights of Europeans since 1750," in Komlos (ed.), Stature, 14.
34. Slaveholders often recorded a deed of manumission years before a slave was freed, conditioned on the good behavior of the slave. Many slaveholders believed that the promise of freedom prompted greater work effort and better behavior. Given this practice, it was impossible to determine if there was a lag between the date of manumission and the date of the registration. In some instances, the newly freed slave registered on the day that he or she was freed. In other instances, many months or years may have passed.
35. This article uses the modern boundaries of Virginia. The counties now included in West Virginia contained few free African-Americans or slaves. Moreover, Brunswick, Chesterfield, and Fairfax counties, which lay on the border between the Tidewater and the Piedmont, were classified as Piedmont. If these populations were distributed across the two regions, the proportions would more closely reflect the census proportions.
36. Separate OLS regressions were computed for light males, dark males, light females, and dark females. Regressions with height at age as dependent variable included the following independent variables: a constant, a dummy variable for age (one through twenty for males, one through seventeen for females), decade of birth (1770s through 1850s), region of registration (Blue Ridge Piedmont, and Tidewater), and a dummy variable if the individual was manumitted. Adjusted R-squares exceeded 0.83 for all regressions, all F-statistics of joint significance exceeded 33.3, and most t-statistics were significant. Detailed results are available from the author on request. Eveleth and Tanner, Worldwide Variation;
37. Bodenhorn, "Complexion Gap."
38. M. A. Preece and M. J. Baines, "A New Family of Mathematical Models Describing the Human Growth Curve," Annals of Human Biology, V (1978), 1-24.
39. The curves were fitted using Model II. Steckel, "Percentiles of Modern Height Standards for Use in Historical Research," Historical Methods, xxix (1996), 157-166.
40. A. Theodore Steegman, Jr., "18th Century British Military Stature: Growth Cessation, Selective Recruiting, Secular Trends, Nutrition at Birth, Cold and Occupation," in Komlos and Cuff (eds.), Classics in Anthropometric History, 168;
41. Stephen Nicholas and Steckel, "Heights and Living Standards of English Workers during the Early Years of Industrialization, 1770-1815," in Classics in Anthropometric History, ibid., 187.
42. Steckel, "A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity, "Journal of Economic History, XLVI (1986), 721-741;
43. Steckel, idem, "Growth Depression and Recovery: The Remarkable Case of American Slaves," Annals of Human Biology, XIV (1987), 111-132.
44. Komlos, "The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum Amenez," Journal of Economic History, XLVII (1987), 897-927;
45. Stanley M. Garn and Diane C. Clark, "Problems in the Nutritional Assessment of Black Individuals," American Journal of Public Health, LXVI (1976), 262-267;
46. James E. Schutte, "Growth Differences between Lower and Middle Income Black Adolescents," Human Biology, LII (1980), 193-204.
47. John H. Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865 (Baltimore, 1913), 173.
48. Steegman, "18th Century British Military Stature," 169. The 1860 manuscript mortality census reports greater mortality from remittent fever (often thought to be malaria) in the Tidewater region. Doctors working for the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in the 1910s uncovered a greater incidence of hookworm in Tidewater counties. Relative regional incidences in the nineteenth century were probably similar.
49. See Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, Fifth Annual Report (Washington, D.C., 1915).
50. Williamson, New People, 23;
51. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), 2V.
52. James O. Horton, "Shades of Color: The Mulatto in Three Antebellum Northern Communities," in idem (ed.), Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community (Washington, D.C., 1993), 122-144;
53. Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty.