Militia membership let ethnic groups claim rights that Blacks were denied

Evidence

These various militia companies were not all to be taken seriously as military formations. In fact, they came in for a great deal of popular scorn. … Whether the militia ever provided anything in the way of real military training, through it various groups asserted their right to bear arms, and the exclusion of black people from it was at least symbolically important. One curious feature of the militia system was the attachment of Negroes to various militia companies. Frank Johnson, the famous bugler, band conductor, and composer, regularly accompanied one of the militia companies. On one occasion the company was scheduled to parade in Boston when they learned that the white bands of Boston would not attend their reception because of Johnson’s presence; the militia colonel thereupon refused to go to Boston. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 504

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ethnic labels carried agency that racial ascription denied — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 359; White supremacist groups receive civil-liberty protections denied to Muslims. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 606

Broader Connections

• Ethnic labels carried agency that racial ascription denied #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 359