#BlackLawsMatter

In an earlier post I wrote about Mary Banks my (8x Great Grandmother) born in 1683, the child of a white indentured servant and a Negro slave. Due to a 1662 Virginia law which said that a child inherited the freedom  status of its mother, Mary and all of my ancestors who descended from her were born (and somehow managed to stay) free.

The irony is that were it not a crime for her mother to have borne a child by a black slave, much of the family history would have been lost.   In fact, almost all of the family history through the 1820’s comes from court records (tax records, deeds and wills).  One example is that my 6th Great Grandmother Sarah Walden inherited 220 acres of land in Surry Va. from her late husband William
as stipulated in his will.  It was executed on February 8^th 1775… as in two months before the start of the Revolutionary War. (I’ll address the “heritage not hate” rhetoric about a certain flag in a later post).

But many of the documents showed the impact of ever more stringent legal restrictions placed on both slaves and free blacks:

·     Mary Banks while born free was still forced to be an indentured servant for her first 21 years. A law was passed shortly after her birth that said mulatto children born to a white indentured servant will serve a 30 year indenture later extended to 31 years.

·      In 1758 the same William Walden in Surry Co VA, along with his brothers and son were fined for not paying taxes on their wives.  This violated a 1668 law that deemed free black women to be taxable similar to slaves. John Banks son of Mary Banks was also charged with this same offense in 1735.

·         In 1842 another relative (also named William Walden) and his sons successfully submitted a petition to the Randolph Co. NC court to be allowed to carry firearms.   The petition was signed by numerous neighbors stating that they were "Mulattoes or free persons of Colour ... of good moral character,"

Why was this necessary? In 1640 the first in a series of laws were passed denying both slaves and free blacks the right to carry guns. Despite the passage of the second amendment n 1791, by 1831 (in part precipitated by the Nat Turner revolt), Virginia, North Carolina and much of the south had passed laws prohibiting free blacks from carrying arms.   

There were far more heinous laws than these directed at slaves like the 1672 Virginia statute which made it legal to wound or kill an enslaved person who resisted arrest.

#BlackLawsMatter …… #BlackLivesMatter

Black Laws in the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era were a reincarnation of the antebellum Slave Codes that ensured segregation, disenfranchisement and in many cases harsh fines or sentencing for minor offenses.  It wasn’t until the mid-1960’s (within my lifetime), that the last of these laws were eradicated by civil rights legislation. However, no different than the Volstead Act did not stop people from drinking during Prohibition, the uneven application of the law for people of color lives on.

For example, some segments of the population can exercise their 2^nd amendment rights in armed standoffs with law enforcement over grazing rights, while unarmed people of color have died while resisting arrest for selling loose cigarettes, or running to avoid a ticket.

The following clip is an illustration of how people with the same constitutional rights can be treated very differently in their dealings with law enforcement, which also often extends to the judicial system: