Free People Of Color
A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved. In the United States, such persons were referred to as "free Negroes," though many were of mixed race (in the terminology of the day, mulattos, generally of European and African descent).
Free people of color was especially a term used in New Orleans and the former Louisiana Territory, where a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. There were also free people of color in Caribbean and Latin American slave societies. There colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to appearance and to the proportion of African ancestry.
Read more about Free People Of Color: History, Definition, Economic Impact, Post-slavery, Notable Free People of Color
Famous quotes containing the words free, people and/or color:
“What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,
To enjoy is to obey.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)