Persons of partial African and European descent who were not enslaved
"Gens de couleur libres" redirects here. For the Matana Roberts album, see Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres.
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Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants, oil painting by Agostino Brunias, Dominica, c. 1764–1796.
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: gens de couleur libres; Spanish: gente de color libre) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who were primarily of black African descent with little mixture.[1] They were a distinct group of free people of color in the French colonies, including Louisiana and in settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue (Haiti), St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry.[citation needed] Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America.
A freed African slave was known as affranchi (French: "freed"). The term was sometimes meant to include the free people of color, but they considered the term pejorative since they had been born free.[2]
The term gens de couleur libres (French:[ʒɑ̃dəkulœʁlibʁ] ("free people of color") was commonly used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery. It frequently referred to free people of mixed African and European ancestry.[3]
In British North America, the term free Negro was often used to cover the same class of people—those who were legally free and visibly of African descent.
^Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004), pp. 5-6.
^Daniel, Yvonne (15 December 2011). Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship. ISBN 9780252036538. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
^Brickhouse, Anna (2009). Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere. Cambridge University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0521101011.
and 24 Related for: Free people of color information
Colonization ofFreePeopleofColorof America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn...
times to refer to white people, mixed-race people, and black people, both free-born and enslaved. The addition of "-ofcolor" was historically necessary...
applied both to formerly enslaved people (freedmen) and to those who had been born free (freepeopleofcolor), whether of African or mixed descent. Slavery...
History of the Color Line: The Rise And Triumph of the One-drop Rule (7th ed.). Backintyme. p. 388. Mary Gehman (2017). The FreePeopleofColorof New Orleans...
growth of the community of Creoles ofcolor, or freepeopleofcolor. New Orleans had the largest community offreepeopleofcolor, well-established before...
understood to include peopleof Acadian descent. Prior to the U.S. Civil War, Louisiana Creoles ofcolor were a class offreepeople who either gained their...
black) regardless of paternity and proportion of other ancestry. During the French colonial period in Louisiana, the term freepeopleofcolor had applied primarily...
Children born to free mixed-race mothers were also free.[citation needed] Paul Heinegg has documented that most of the freepeopleofcolor listed in the...
documented that many individuals were classified as freepeopleofcolor, or similar terms in a variety of colonial, local and state records. Some CRP have...
independent Republic of Liberia : its Constitution and Declaration of Independence : address of the colonists to the freepeopleofcolor in the United States...
but also a pejorative term for Freepeopleofcolor. It is used in the English language to describe the social class of freedmen in Saint-Domingue, and...
of antisemitic trends in the Kingdom of France. Freepeopleofcolor were still placed under restrictions via the Code noir, but were otherwise free to...
the former slaves had won, and with the collaboration of already freepeopleofcolor, of their independence from white Europeans. The revolution was the...
was founded in 1816. It supported the settlement of thousands offreepeopleofcolor to its colony of Liberia, in West Africa. There were also initially...
1630, and by Black slaves and freepeopleofcolor also residing in that region, as well as the American Indian people known as the Ramapough Lenape Nation...
population were slaves. Ellison and his sons were among a number of successful freepeopleofcolor in the antebellum years, but Ellison's master had passed on...
controlled by freepeopleofcolor and formerly enslaved black people from the United States and the Caribbean with the help and support of both the United...
recorded 81 percent of the freepeopleofcolor as mulatto, a term used to cover all degrees of mixed race.[page needed] Mostly part of the Francophone group...
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