Creek Freedmen Controversy
From 1981-2001, the Creek had membership rules that allowed applicants to use a variety of documentary sources to establish qualifications for membership.
In August 2001, the Creek passed new membership rules, requiring citizens to be descended from an ancestor on the "Creek by blood" registers of the Dawes Rolls. They excluded descendants of "Creek Freedmen," although they were listed on the Dawes Rolls and often documented in other registers as having ancestors with Creek blood. The Freedmen had been listed on a separate register, regardless of their proportion of Creek ancestry, and there had been intermarriage between the ethnic groups for years. Prior to the change in code, Creek Freedmen could use existing registers and the preponderance of evidence to establish qualification for citizenship, and were to be aided by the Citizenship Board. The Creek Freedmen have challenged their exclusion from citizenship in legal actions which are pending.
Read more about this topic: Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Famous quotes containing the words creek, freedmen and/or controversy:
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)