Descendants of Free Black Slave Owners Should Not Receive Reparations
B y W. F. Twyman, Jr.
[Note — Throughout the day, I thought about edits to this essay. The descendants of free black slave owners are comfortable living in the shadows. So, I don’t want to overstate the number of descendants. A more accurate figure would be up to 1 million descendants descend from free black slave owners. Moreover, and upon reflection, I live in a bubble in this sense. The black Americans I know intimately are atypical. I resist this realization because I perceive myself as a small-town kid from Chester, a country mouse who married a city mouse. My self-perceptions lag behind my reality of people who live in Jack and Jill, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Sag Harbor and the Vineyard. So, my black family experience is unusual in terms of a generic black American family and I will so revise and edit down below.
Why do I care so much about these edits this afternoon? These people are family, close and distant, so I want to lean into the most true sentences I can. I also feel it is a little bit entitled to descend from generations of free black slave owners on the one hand and eagerly hope for reparations for American slavery on the other hand. Did I do the right thing in writing this essay? It is not acknowledged in some black American circles…but some people were born into privilege. Straight up, God blessed generational blessing. Sometimes, I feel like an interloper when I write about these facts.]
Are we avatars for our ancestors? As I type tonight, I am sitting several feet from a self-identified Black American woman, nearly equal parts African and European in descent. She is strong in Black culture and consciousness. Her maiden name at one time was known to all in the Black Elite in the 1800s. Today, few remember the name except for history buffs like me. From around 1790 to 1865, her free black ancestors owned slaves over four generations. Less than 5% of white southerners owned slaves. As a matter of simple justice, descendants of free black slave owners should not receive reparations.
According to the 1830 U.S. Census and research conducted by Carter G. Woodson, a notable number of free blacks owned slaves in a slave society. Roughly 16% of free blacks in the antebellum South owned slaves. It was not really a thing in my neck of the woods, Virginia. I have no free black slave owners in my family tree. I am indifferent to the fact. Facts are facts. However, we do not always appreciate that there were different subcultures in the South. Virginia was not the Deep South.
Consider the incidence of free black owning of slaves in the Deep South. 20% of free blacks owned slaves in Georgia. 25% of free blacks owned slaves in Alabama. 26% of free blacks owned slaves in Mississippi. 40% of free blacks owned slaves in Louisiana. And when it comes to South Carolina, the ancestral home of my wife’s family, 43% of free black heads of households owned slaves. 43% is a pretty big number compared to 5% of whites throughout the South but what do I know?
So, how many black Americans today are descendants of free black slaveowners? I bet the number is sizeable.
James Mitchell (1758 - 1821)
According to Ancestry.com, there are at least eight family trees for James Mitchell. Mitchell had 12 children which allowed for abundant descendants over two hundred years. His first child, Elizabeth Mitchell, was born in 1785. His last child, Alexander Robert Mitchell, passed away in 1866. Mitchell, the founding father of his family, owned three slaves. Just one descendant family tree, the Vernon Holloway Family, lists a total of 43,161 names. And these names are all deceased descendants. Living descendants are not included. If one zeros in to just the surname “Mitchell,” one will find 61 Mitchell descendants scattered throughout the country from South Carolina, Ohio, and Fort Worth, Texas to Florida, Los Angeles and Kentucky. And of course, there are many family descendants who are not named Mitchell, like my wife.
These are the results from just one family tree line of descendants under James Mitchell. I am not a mathematical expert but I think it is safe to say there are probably 100,000 direct descendants of this one free black slave owner born in 1758. Consider that there were 3,775 free black slave owners throughout the U.S. in the 1830 U.S. Census. If we multiply 100,000 times 3,775, the projected number of descendants of free black slave owners could be as high as 377,500,000. Of course that number is impossible. There are only 45 million black Americans in the U.S.
Which leads me to my surmise that up to a million black Americans living today are the descendants of the hardy band of 3,775 free black slave owners in the 1830 U.S. Census! Certainly, my three children are as well as all of their cousins, aunts and uncles on Mom’s side. There are nine generations between Mitchell and my daughter. At that level of ancestral distance, one has 512 7x great grandparents. Is our black American family that unusual? I doubt it. On second thought, yeah, we’re pretty out there.
I am quick here with the caveats and cautions. I did not have time tonight to count every single deceased descendant of James Mitchell. Nor did I have time to count every single descendant of 3,334 other free black slave owners. I leave these details to reparations research teams and study panels. I am a lonely Substack writer without the resources of the City of Boston, the City of San Francisco or the State of California behind me. However, I can tell you these ancestors had large families in the 1800s. I believe Mitchell’s son-in-law, Richard Holloway, Sr., had 13 children.
And so it goes, the exponential growth of descendants from a founding 3,775 people.
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Why should descendants of free black slave owners not receive reparations for American slavery? There are several reasons I will touch upon this evening.
First, descendants of these ancestors gained and profited from slave labor. This is a truth. If one grew up in a free black family that owned slaves, one was doing better than 95% of white southerners living in the South. Why should descendants cash in on the pain of slaves owned by their ancestors? I don’t think reparations for American slavery should be blind to free black slave owning. The same rule should apply, regardless of the race of one’s slave owning ancestors.
This leads to the difficult issue to be confronted. Suppose there is no legacy of slavery for some people? Could it be that the descendants of free black slave owners were doing ok money wise and did even better after opportunity opened up during Reconstruction? Remember our Pioneer Black Lawyers? Did any of these Pioneer Black Lawyers suffer from the lingering effects of slavery? If these men could make it in the late 1800s, why would a descendant of a free black slave owner be ham strung by the lingering effects of American slavery today? It doesn’t make sense, although I am aware some care about feelings more than logic and reality.
If anything, descendants of free black slave owners should feel black guilt. The movement should be to identify all slaves owned by free blacks. Demand that descendants of James Mitchell and other free black slaves owners apologize to the descendants of family slaves. Wouldn’t that seem more sensible? And I suspect there are hundreds of thousands, if not a million, of black Americans who have amends to make. Let’s call it “reverse reparations” for lack of a better word.
This leads me to my final point — if up to a million of black Americans prove to be descendants of a free black slave owner, how does one apportion out the reparations liability among black Americans? In the end, would we develop an accounting where we weigh ancestral gain from slavery against ancestral pain from slavery for each black individual? Do we trust captured reparations commissions and study groups to do right by the descendants of slaves owned by free black slave owners? Suppose one black family ancestor enslaved another black family ancestor? I am sure there has been intermarriage over two hundred years between the descendants of free black slave owners and black slaves enslaved by free blacks. Where would it all end? When would it all end?
Conclusion: As you live your life, consider that the next black American you encounter may well be a descendant of a free black slave owner. The odds might be up to 1 in 40. Would that realization change your perception of the reparations debate? Think about it.
George A. Shrewsbury was born about 1819. He had one daughter with Georgiana Mary Holloway on November 8, 1859. Shrewsbury ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1872 and was elected as a Republican to the Charleston, South Carolina City Council in 1873. The City awarded Councilman Shrewsbury two city contracts for the provision of meat. He died on March 7, 1875, in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 56. Shrewsbury was born free. He was a mulatto and literate. Historian Eric Foner has described Shrewsbury as "[a] wealthy free black butcher and realtor in antebellum Charleston..." See Eric Foner, Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Office Holders During Reconstruction, p. 194. He was a member of the Brown Fellowship Society. Shrewsbury was the great grandson-in-law of James Mitchell. Shrewsbury owned 12 slaves, the 4th largest free black owner of slaves in Charleston, South Carolina.