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:
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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.)