Rising racism in slave codes progressively degraded free blacks to near-slave status

Evidence

Not all blacks in the colonies were slaves, especially in the eighteenth century. Some of these free blacks were emancipated slaves; some were descended from black servants who had never been slaves. As the racist element in the slave codes increased, the legal position of free blacks deteriorated. One fear was that blacks as a group might conspire against whites, that they would make common cause with slaves. The law discriminated against free blacks and hounded them from colony to colony. Law and society debased this class of people, treated them like pariahs, then used their low status as an excuse for further debasement. By 1776, the free black was a kind of half slave in many parts of the country. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 474

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Believing blacks were animal-like masked the contradiction of slavery with equality. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1167