"One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive, an example paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. If we are going to use history for our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego, and giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment, then we must give up the idea of history either as a science or an art." W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, Page 722

 

Chapter One- Introduction: 

     The research for first part of this project, “The Burrow Family of the 19th Century”, was begun in 2022 and the writing began and ended in the first half of 2024. Somewhere toward the end of this period, I discovered in the 1870 census that there were newly-freed African American families living close by the White Burrow families in Carroll County, Tennessee. Some of them had the last name of Burrow. I then came to the obvious conclusion that these Black families adopted the last name of their previous owner. After some weeks of pondering this discovery, I concluded that the Black Burrows could be researched (from 1870 on) in the same way that I had studied the White Burrow family discussed in the first half of this project.

     About this time, another remarkable discovery was made. I occasionally contact others on the Ancestry.com website, who appear to be studying the same or similar topic as I, to share information with. About this time, I contacted a person, Renee’, who had posted some images on Ancestry related to the Burrow family of West Tennessee. Shortly after we began corresponding, we began talking about the Black Burrows of Carroll County and she shared that her husband was a descendant of the Black Burrows. Both Renee’ and her husband, Lawrence, were avid genealogists, although Renee’ has devoted more of her time to this than he over the last few years.

     Gradually over this brief time period, I became very interested in developing a story about Tennessee Burrows who had been slaves and were set free at the end of the American Civil War. Previously, I endeavored to understand the lives of the White Burrows; now was a chance to do the same for the other half, those that were enslaved by the White Burrows and were now a free people. After about two months of correspondence, I proposed to Renee’ that I would like to collaborate with her on such a project. She immediately accepted. This would have been mid-Spring, 2024. A tentative meeting was set for late August in Milan, Tennessee. Renee' would be driving from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Renee' and Lawrence would be visiting family on this trip and I would be conducting research on the Burrow family. This was my third trip to West Tennessee doing family research on the Burrows (2016, 2023 & 2024).

     The meeting in late August, 2024 was brief, but emotionally powerful. During our hour-long talk, Renee’ brought out Ancestry.com documentation showing that her husband, Lawrence, and I were cousins (He and I have the same 4th great grandfather, Phillip Jarrell Burrow). We were both obviously delighted with this remarkable revelation. Toward the end of our meeting, the three of us talked about how we might collaborate on producing a paper that would complement the previous paper on the “White Burrows”. It would be the other half of the story of slavery, emancipation and a history of the “Black Burrows”. That this project would be a collaboration between the White and the Black sides of the Burrow family was another exciting and unique aspect of the research and the writing of the paper. 

 

Chapter Two- The Genealogist’s Journey

    My personal journey of the study of the Burrow Family deserves a place in this paper. I began the research for this branch of my family primarily with a trip to Bedford & Carroll Counties in 2016. I traveled there in a pickup with a camper on the bed of the truck and a motorcycle on the back. In the latter part of this trip. I camped at a marina on the Tennessee River for two nights and traveled by motorcycle to the Carroll County seat, Huntingdon, which was about 30 miles to the west of my campground. There I found out about an unusual historical museum (the Gordon Browning Museum) about 10 miles to the NW in McKenzie, TN. The librarian there (Jere Cox) turned out to be very knowledgeable and eager to help. Amazingly, he had a copy of a very useful Burrow family genealogy book that he sold to me. He also gave me directions to the Burrow family cemetery which was about 15 miles to the south and close to Lavinia, TN. It is an untended family cemetery that is in a grove of trees. There were probably twenty tombstones there, most of which were unreadable. The largest tombstone there was for Banks Mitchum Burrow, Sr. (1791-1851). I did not know it at the time, but he would be the primary focus of my genealogical research for much of the next eight years.

     I have always been attracted to American history and I found that my most satisfying genealogical research since beginning in 1983 has combined important American historical events with the study of my family. In 2015, I became interested in the Battle of Alamance, a battle that my ancestors of the Clapp family line fought against the pre-Revolutionary War British colonial government in North Carolina in 1771. I read extensively on the subject and was pleasantly surprised in how that piece of history greatly enhanced my sense of the life and times of that line of my family.

     Following several years of collecting information about a Meadville, Pennsylvania will dispute between members of my Finney family in the late 1820s, I began focusing on the courthouse records of the trial concerning the probate of Robert Finney’s (1744-1827) will. The extensive records of the court enabled me to put together a comprehensible account of the family struggle to litigate the will. I put this story on a website (www.meadville1827.org) in 2019.

     I then began a study of the Fulkerson line of my family, which I paired with research of their involvement with slavery over two hundred years in Virginia and Missouri. Also included in this research was an account of the migration of a part of this family to Oregon via the Oregon Trail and their early days there. After two trips West (travel with my pickup camper to West Wyoming and a flight to Portland and travels by rental car over the last two hundred miles of the trail in Oregon, I put another story online with the development of another website, (www.fulkerson1847.org) in 2022.

     My plan is to intersperse the present paper with sections that describe the personal adventure of researching this part of my family. See Chapters Eight & Nine.

 

Chapter Three- The Black Burrows at the Time of Emancipation

 

“De Lord He was wd is. And wouldn’t let us be ‘pressed no more . . . [We shall] not be robed ob de rights de Lord hab gib us—and the year of the Jubilee is come.”- Black preacher in Nashville, Slavery’s End in Tennessee, John Cimprich, Page 60

 

     The U.S. census reports, so very valuable to genealogical research, did not start to treat Black Americans as human beings until the Eighth Census in 1870. Before that time, enslaved Blacks were counted, but only their number per household was revealed (1790-1840). In the 1850 & 1860 census a “slave schedule” gave the names of the “slave owner”, the age, gender and color (Black, Mulatto) of the enslaved. No name of the enslaved was given.

     In the 1870 census, newly freed Black Americans emerged from the dark history of their past as human beings with names, families, occupations, etc. as of any other citizen of this country. As part of this revolutionary change, two small African American families emerge in the Carroll County, Tennessee census and begin our story of the “Black Burrows” (Newly freed slaves often took the surnames of their previous owners). The first family is that of Green Burrow (1832- ), his wife, Sarah (1843-1920) and three young children: John, 9, Thomas, 5, Elizabeth, 4, and Mary, 3. Next door to them is another small family, headed by Riley Burrow (1838-1874), his wife, Emily (1838- ), and presumed mother, Fanny (1838- ). Both men are listed as “working on farm.” The farm is clearly that of the John Jefferson Burrow plantation, as the daughter of John and her family are also shown by the census as being next door. We now theorize that Fanny is the mother of Green and Riley and that Green’s son, Thomas, is the next progenitor of the Black Burrow line that is the object of this part of the study.

     A second story sheds further light on the Black Burrows from this time. DNA analysis by Ancestry.com shows that Green Burrow was the offspring of a White Burrow, Phillip Jarrell Burrow (1771-1861).  Throughout this time Phillip and his family lived in Civil District 1 (probably Lavinia) in Carroll County and is shown as having one slave (Fanny?) in 1840, and two slaves (boys ages 3 & 5) in the 1850 census slave schedule. Also, a Green Burrow shows up in the 1850 census listing of Phillip Burrow and is 18 years of age at that time. We assume that this is Green, the biracial child of Phillip and  possibly, Fanny. 

     The American Civil War and the decade after was a time of enormous, social, economic and political upheaval in the South. Hundreds of thousands of men left their homes, families and farms to fight for the South. Almost every able-bodied male was recruited by the Confederate army. The war came suddenly to Mid & West Tennessee in 1862 with the Union invasion and decisive victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Clarksville, Nashville, Island No. 10 and Memphis. Many slaves from the region began fleeing the plantations and following the Union army. “In July of 1862, Congress passed a measure that provided for the confiscation and liberation of slaves belonging to secessionists. Later in September, Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation promised to free all slaves in the Confederate states. Although the Final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 exempted Tennessee, many federal authorities in the state showed little respect for the institution thereafter.” Slavery’s End in Tennessee- John Cimprich, Page 16. Following this development, the Union army here and elsewhere began recruiting slaves of conquered Confederate territory as “contraband” and using them as a work force for the army operations.

     Toward the end of the war, large numbers of slaves were leaving their plantation homes and going to the major towns where they attempted to find work and shelter. However, in rural communities in West Tennessee, legal and extra-legal efforts by the Whites pressured the slaves to stay on the plantations. “Vigilante bands and guerrillas maintained slavery in Gibson and Carroll counties at least through early summer of 1865.” Slavery’s End in Tennessee- John Cimprich, Page 120. Cities like Memphis and Nashville were swamped by huge numbers of ex-slaves and make-do shelter camps sprung up in the outskirts of these places.

 

“Probably the largest number of violent acts stemmed from disputes arising from black efforts to assert their freedom from control by their former owners. Freedmen were assaulted and murdered for attempting to leave plantations, disputing contract settlements, not laboring in the manner desired by their employers, attempting to buy or rent land, and resisting whippings. One black who refused to be bound and whipped, asserting that ‘he was a free man and he would not be tied like a slave,’ was shot dead by his employer, a prominent Texas lawyer. In parts of Tennessee, a Nashville newspaper reported early in 1867, "’Regulators' are riding about whipping, maiming and killing all negroes who do not obey the orders of their former masters, just as if slavery existed.’" Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, Stephen Ash, Page 121

 

On the other hand, even before the civil war was over, there were some slave owners who began paying their slave force wages or offering them contracts for land use. Though few in number, they wisely saw the “handwriting on the wall” and accepted this enlightened course.

 

Of the 17 slaves shown as being on the Burrow Lavinia plantation in 1860, we note those still there in 1870 census below:

Eva Burrow, 27; Mandy, 6; Frank, 3.

Green Burrow, 38; Sarah, 27; John, 9; Thomas, 5; Mary. 3; Elizabeth, 1.

Henry Burrow, 23; Peter, 19; Martha, 25.

Riley Burrow, 32; Emily, 32; Fanny, 52 (Likely, the mother of Green and Riley).

Liza Burrow, 30; Hezakiah, 20; Frank, 18; Frances, 18, Julia, 16; John 12; Jake, 9; Mark, 7; William, 6; Elenora, 1.

Lucy Burrow. 42; Daniel, 19; Coraline, 30; Samuel, 14; Chany, 10.

The men above are shown by the census taker as “working farm” and the women as “keeping house.” Historians often point to the newly freed people as having a great interest of having their own homes, education for their children and adopting the White model for the family of the men working the fields and women keeping house.

 

“Aleck, a runaway from Haywood County, Tennessee expressed a rule of thumb for fellow slaves: ‘If they have good homes that they had better stay where they are . . . if they run off they have no homes, and perhaps can’t get any work,’ but if their masters were cruel or their subsistence poor, they had everything to gain and nothing to lose by leaving.” Slavery’s End in Tennessee- Cimprich, Page 22

 

     That 19 of the above were living in 1860 indicates that all of the Burrow slaves continued on the Burrow plantation and took the Burrow surname at the end of the civil war. It is likely that the Black Burrows were living and working on the plantation during the early Reconstruction period as “tenants” and were continuing the same work as prewar, only now receiving some kind of wage. Later, the share cropping arrangement became the most dominant contract between ex-slaves and landowners. A later chapter of this paper will discuss this economic model that existed throughout the South for the rest of the 19th century and through the first half of next.

 

Chapter Four- Life in the South during the Reconstruction Period

 

15th Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”- February 3, 1870

​

"The work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins." Frederick Douglas

 

     Following the end of the war, the South became an “occupied” territory. The southern states were not recognized as being a part of the Union and its citizens were not recognized as having any rights. First, each state had to formally adopt the recent 13th, 14th & 15th amendments to the constitution before being readmitted to the Union. All southern citizens were required to sign a pact renouncing their allegiance to the Confederacy and pledging their agreement to the laws of the Union. Gradually, the Southern states were admitted back into the Union. Tennessee was the first state readmitted on July 24, 1866. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina were readmitted in the summer of 1868. Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were readmitted in 1870. Georgia was readmitted on July 15, 1870, after being expelled in 1869 for removing Black Americans from its state legislature.

     “The chief question facing the nation following the end of the Civil War was ‘what to do with the Negro?’ Most in the North would agree that after freeing the Blacks, the nation had some responsibility for the welfare of the Black population. The Black population at that time was estimated at 4,000,000 as compared to 5,500,00 whites. The white plantation owners needed black labor to work their plantations. Now, however, large numbers of blacks were refusing to work, insisting that they were free. On the Bradford plantation in Florida, one untoward incident followed another. First, the family cook told Mrs. Bradford, ‘if she want any dinner she kin cook it herself.’ Then the former slaves went off to a meeting with Northern soldiers to discuss ‘our freedom.’ Told that she and her daughter could not attend, one woman replied, ‘they were now free and if she saw fit to take her daughter into that crowd it was nobody's business.’ ‘Never before had I heard a word of impudence from any of our black folk,’ recorded nineteen-year-old Susan Bradford, ‘but they are not ours any longer.’" Stephen Ash, Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Page 80

     “One black who refused to be bound and whipped, asserting that ‘he was a freeman and he would not be tied like a slave,’ was shot dead by his employer, a prominent Texas lawyer. In parts of Tennessee, a Nashville newspaper reported early in 1867, ‘regulators' are riding about whipping, maiming and killing all negroes who do not obey the orders of their former masters, just as if slavery existed." Stephen Ash, Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Page 121

     Also, at this time, the South was devastated by the war.

 

“Between 1860 and 1870, while farm output expanded in the rest of the nation, the South experienced precipitous declines in the value of farmland and the amount of acreage under cultivation. The number of horses fell by 29 percent, swine by 35 percent, and farm values by half. Georgia alone reported one million fewer swine, 50,000 fewer horses, and 200,000 fewer cattle, and had 3 million fewer acres under cultivation in 1870 than ten years earlier. For the South as a whole, the real value of all property, even discounting that represented by slaves, stood 30 percent lower than its prewar figure, and the output of the staple crops: cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, and food crops like corn and potatoes, stood far below their antebellum levels.’ Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg returned from the war to his ‘once prosperous’ Alabama home to find ‘all, all was lost, except my debts.’ Bragg and his wife, a woman ‘raised in affluence,’ lived for a time in a slave cabin, ‘expecting,’ as the general wrote, ‘to be even deprived of the necessities of life.’ Stephen Ash Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Page 125

​

     In March of 1865 just before the end of the War, Congress created the “Freedman’s Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau’s responsibilities can only be described as daunting; then included introducing a workable system of free labor in the South, establishing schools for freed families, providing aid to the destitute, aged, ill, and insane, adjudicating disputes among blacks and between Blacks & Whites, and attempting to secure for Blacks and White Unionists equal justice by the state and local governments established during Presidential Reconstruction.

     While the Freedman’s Bureau interceded in thousands of cases brought before them by Black citizens who believed that they were being abused by the Whites and brought about many instances of justice, The mass of complaints were so numerous to make it impossible to review and adjudicate more than a small percentage. The white population of the South was determined to keep the Blacks in their place, that is, subordinate to white supremacy. To its everlasting credit the Bureau was very successful in founding and supporting 4,300 public schools in the South to educate and support the Freedman’s and the poor White families.

     The right to vote was denied the Freedman until after the Fifteenth Amendment. Enforcement of the Black’s right to vote began with three “congressional “Enforcement Acts” which were passed in March 1870, February & April of 1871.

     Throughout Reconstruction, Blacks remained "irrepressible democrats." "Negroes all crazy on politics again," noted a Mississippi plantation manager in the fall of 1873. "Every tenth negro a candidate for some office." And the Republican party—the party of emancipation and black voting rights—became an institution as central to the black community as the church and school. When not deterred by violence, blacks eagerly attended political gatherings and voted in extraordinary numbers; their turnout in many elections approached 90 percent. "It is the hardest thing in the world to keep a negro away from the polls," commented an Alabama white, "that is the one thing he will do, to vote." Long after they had been stripped of the franchise, Blacks would recall the act of voting as a defiance of inherited norms of White superiority, and regard "the loss of suffrage as being the loss of freedom."

     “Early in 1868, a Northerner reporting on Alabama's election day captured the sense of possibility with which Radical Reconstruction began. In defiance of fatigue, hardship, hunger, and threats of employers, "Blacks had come en masse to the polls. Not one in fifty wore an ‘unpatched garment,’ few possessed a pair of shoes, yet for hours they stood in line in a ‘pitiless storm.’ Why? The hunger to have the same chances as the White men they feel and comprehend. . . . That is what brings them here. Rarely has a community invested so many hopes in politics as did blacks during Radical Reconstruction.” Stephen Ash Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 Page 291

     The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee (75 miles south of Memphis) shortly after the end of the war. It spread rapidly throughout the South. “Suddenly, the Klan seemed to be everywhere. Menacing notices appeared tacked onto city halls, post offices, Unionists' homes, the doors of isolated cabins. Night-riding, threats, floggings, and the intimidation of Black voters spread over West Tennessee. In Maury County and Marshall County, in Rutherford and Cannon counties, in Humphreys County west of Nashville, there were sudden spikes in violence. In Pulaski, Klansmen who didn't even bother to disguise themselves killed one of the town's few outspoken Black leaders, Orange Jones; four days later, they seized five men from a home, flogged them, and threatened to kill them for voting the radical ticket. The pro-Klan Nashville Union blithely declared on its front page that a Black Union Leaguer who had led an unarmed march through the town of Gallatin "deserves to be killed." A Union veteran named Graham was driven out of Mount Pleasant, where he was mobbed by Klansmen led by the town constable and given five minutes to leave under threat of immediate execution. At Waverly, another Unionist who had fled at the start of the war and returned to reclaim his farm was tied with a rope around his neck, kicked, beaten, dragged up and down a rocky streambed, and left comatose. At Memphis, Klansmen in full regalia openly rode up to police headquarters and challenged the police to arrest them, while the pro-Klan Memphis Avalanche newspaper welcomed the Klan to town.” Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, Fergus Bordewich, Page 47

     Nathan Bedford Forrest, probably one of the most known and admired Confederate generals, known for his daring and brilliant use of Confederate Calvary was named the KKK’s first “Grand Wizard.” Forrest, who was born in Bedford County, Tennessee is especially revered in Tennessee to this day. “Forrest promised open war: 'I intend to kill the Radicals. There is not a Radical leader in this town but is a marked man; and if a trouble should break out, not one of them would be left alive. Their houses are picketed, and when the fight comes not one of them would ever get out alive.' Forrest asserted that in Tennessee alone there were forty thousand Klan members, and in all of the southern states about 550,000." Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, Fergus Bordewich, Pages 77-78.

     A series of three “Enforcement Acts” adopted by congress in 1870 and 1871 challenged the illegal activities of the KKK, established the legal right of blacks to vote, placed the administration of all national elections under federal authority and empowered federal judges and U.S. marshals to oversee local polling places. The third act became known as the Ku Klux Klan Act and empowered the president to unilaterally employ whatever federal troops he required to protect the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. With these acts and the resulting federal enforcement of them, the first wave of KKK activity ended, only to rise again in the 1880s and 1930s. And, during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s, Klan membership rebounded to more than fifty thousand across the South.

     “In 1868, the Ku Klux Klan began activities in West Tennessee, using open, systematic, purposeful political terror to achieve its goals, focusing many attacks on freedmen’s schools and teachers. The Klan created a reign of terror in parts of Tennessee, according to a state legislative committee that investigated reports of Klan activities. The committee found that Klan members were robbing poor negroes of their firearms; taking them out of their houses at night, hanging, shooting and whipping them in a most cruel manner, and driving them from their homes. Nor was this confined to the colored men alone; women and children have been subjected to the torture of the lash, and brutal assaults have been committed upon them by these night- prowlers…. Tennessee governor Brownlow declared martial law in 1869 in nine counties of Middle and West Tennessee where the Ku Klux Klan was especially active.” Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, Fergus Bordewich, Page 341 Gibson was one of these counties.

     The Freedmen’s Bureau left Tennessee in 1869 and the state election of the same year resulted in a Democratic majority. The new governor, DeWitt Senter, restored civil authority in counties that had been under martial law and disbanded the militia. Legislative actions abolished many of the legal gains Blacks had made under Governor Brownlow’s administration. In 1870, a new constitution was written and approved, allowing black male suffrage in principle but restricting it in practice through the use of a poll tax. 

     "The national election of 1876 has traditionally been treated as the de facto end of Reconstruction. In reality, it was an anticlimax. By the time the votes were counted, Reconstruction was hardly a ghost of itself. The Democrats already controlled the House of Representatives. Troop levels in the South stood close to rock bottom. The political steam had gone out of northern Radicalism. The Supreme Court had gutted the Enforcement Acts and federal prosecutions in the South had petered out." Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and Battle to Save Reconstruction, Fergus Bordewich, Page 343

 

Chapter Five- The Black Burrows in the Time of the Reconstruction

     Events that Impacted the Burrow family during the Reconstruction & Redemption (1865- 1900):

 

1866- The KKK is founded in Pulaski, Tennessee. A riot broke out in Memphis between whites and blacks, which continued for two days and resulted in the death of 24 Black men and the wounding of one White man.

 

1867- Governor Brownlow of Tennessee pushes through the state legislature the “Negro Voting Bill” providing unequivocal suffrage for all Black men in Tennessee.

On the February 6, 1867, the House of Representatives of Tennessee passed a bill striking the word ”white” from the franchise law of the state by a vote of 38-25. The Senate concurred on February 18th, by a vote of 14-7. And in March, the Supreme Court of Tennessee upheld the constitutionality of Black American suffrage. There were two or three Black Americans in the Tennessee legislature during reconstruction, while others served as state and city officers. Nashville at one time had a third of its city council composed of Black Americans.

 

1870 & 1871- The federal government passes the Enforcement Acts, which were intended to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.

 

1871- Tennessee leases its nearly eight hundred prisoners, nearly all of them Black Americans, to the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company.

 

1873- Most Klan chapters were disbanded.

 

1874- The Trenton, Tennessee lynching of 18 Black Americans. This was less than ten miles from the Burrow plantation.

 

1877- U.S. President Hayes pulls federal troops from the South. The Freedman’s Bureau’s operations are ended.

 

1890- Tennessee legislature passes a poll tax for the voting privilege along with three other bills restricting voting by Black Americans.

 

1893- Tennessee eliminated the sale of men into its coal mines.

​

1896- The Supreme Court Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required railroad companies to provide separate accommodations for Black and White passengers. In 1892, Homer Plessy, who was 7/8 Caucasian, was arrested for refusing to leave a Whites-only car. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state, upholding the constitutionality of the law. The majority opinion, written by Justice Henry Brown, established the "separate but equal" doctrine, which stated that racial segregation laws were constitutional as long as the facilities for Black and White people were equal.

​

     Initially, the Reconstruction was a time of great jubilee and wonder for Black citizens. Across the South, the freed slaves took great interest in voting in state and national politics. Most refused gang labor and the “sunup to sundown” work hours and took time off to work their own small plots of land to feed their families. While many left the plantations that they had lived and worked on for most of their lives, the majority wisely stayed put.

 

“Former slaves were separated into three groups. The first, abandoned their former ‘master’ and the place of their enslavement as quickly as it had become clearly established that they were in fact free to go wherever they wished. Other families – each of them led by one from the generation of middle-aged slaves who had spent the longest spans of their lives as slaves – chose to remain close by the ‘master’, likely still residing in the slave quarters a short distance from the ‘master’s’ big house and later in simple tenant cabins erected to replace them. The third group of former slaves settled themselves in a life overshadowed by their former enslavement, but clearly distinct from the controlled lives they formerly led.” Slavery by a Different Name, Douglas Blackmon, Pages 59-60

 

It appears from the 1870 & 1880 census that the Black Burrows were of the above middle group of ex-slaves.

     Plantation owners struggled with how to treat the ex-slaves as free and independent and as tenants or even employees. If the landowners were fair-minded, reasonable contracts were signed with their newly freed slaves spelling out the conditions of their new relationship. Of course, the freedmen had no land, money or credit. They usually continued living in their previous slave cabins and worked the land just as they had during slavery. They also had to be provided with seed, fertilizer, work tools and at least one mule for plowing. This was typically done by the landowner, who had established in the contracts to recoup their cash outlays at the end of the growing season

     The sharecropping system quickly emerged. Typically, the landowner provided the land, shelter and provisions to the sharecropper and the income from the year’s crop was shared by both landowners and tenants (after, the cash outlays by the owner were subtracted from the tenant’s share). Commonly, the share ratio was halves, but other ratios were possible and usually favorable to the landowner. It is fairly certain that the Black and White Burrows adopted the sharecropping model at some point in the 1870s or even earlier. It was attractive based on its simplicity; but for dishonest landowners, it allowed the potential for excessive control, deceit and fraud.

     That the Green & Riley Burrow families (See below) continued to live on the Burrow plantation well into the 1880s suggests that they were probably treated fairly by the John Jefferson Burrow family who owned the plantation land. Unfortunately, we are kept from knowing where these families resided in the stretch of time from 1880 to 1900, due to the loss of the U.S. 1890 census in a fire in the early 20th century.

 

1870 Census

Eva Burrow, 27; Mandy, 6; Frank, 3.

Green Burrow, 38; Sarah, 27; John, 9; Thomas, 5; Mary. 3; Elizabeth, 1.

Henry Burrow, 23; Peter, 19; Martha, 25.

Riley Burrow, 32; Emily, 32; Fanny, 52.

Lucy Burrow. 42; Daniel, 19; Coraline, 30; Samuel, 14; Chany, 10.

 

1880 Census

Green Burrow, 49; Sarah, 36; John, 19; Thomas, 16; Elizabeth, 14.

Riley Burrow, 49; Emily, 36; Fanny, 60, Lucy, 57 (see Lucy in 1870 above); Markus, 13; Emma, 9

(The Green & Riley families appear to be the only Black Burrows still on the Burrow plantation. I could not find the Eva and Henry Burrow families)

 

Chapter Six- The History of the “Jim Crow” Period of the South, 1877-1963

 

“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.’” W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 Page 30

 

“In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to secure a compromise with Southern Democrats that would grant him the presidency in a contested election, agreed to pull the remaining troops from the South. With the troops gone, White Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systematic White suppression of Black life proved so severe that this period between the 1880s and the early 20th Century became known as the ‘Second Slavery.’” 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones, page 30

 

     The stretch of time between 1880 and 1900 was an extremely bad time for Black Americans. The protection by the Union occupation army and the Freedman’s Bureau was withdrawn from the South in 1877. Black citizens went from being eligible to vote, hold office and being allowed to serve on juries to being disenfranchised in all three areas by numerous laws restricting their access to the polls. Their conduct in public was under constant scrutiny and under threat by the “black codes” instituted across the South that prohibited them from being on public roads and streets without just cause, required adherence to proscribed behaviors such as giving White pedestrians the right of way at all times, not addressing Whites unless spoken to, etc. Refusal to adhere to the black codes could lead to being whipped, jailed or lynched. This period of time lasting approximately ten years became known at the “Redemption” meaning the restoration of White rule in the South.

     The “sharecropping” arrangement between landowners and freedmen looked good in the beginning to Blacks who only knew slavery and as it seemed to give the sharecropper his own home and a small plot of land. It appeared that with hard work and ingenuity, this could be a means of bringing up the income of the black family and a chance to one day own their own land. On its face, it did seem to be a promising arrangement in the early years of sharecropping. The landowner provided the land, seed and fertilizer. The sharecropper provided the labor. At the end of the harvest, the landowner then claimed one half of the crop and the repayment of the loan for seed and fertilizer usually with exorbitant interest rates. The Black sharecroppers learned over time that it was actually a losing proposition. As many of them could not read or write, the contracts that they were urged to sign were fraudulent at best. Most of them ended each harvest being further in debt than before. Being in debt to the landowner meant being trapped in a perpetual cycle.

     The Green and Thomas Burrow families had the relative safety of living and working the land of their former owners, but were probably continuing to live in their previous slave quarters and were soon working on the sharecroppers contract. As a result and after many years of working the cotton and corn fields owned by others, they were little better off than when they were slaves.

 

“Sharecropping labor in the rural South is forced and the laborer is a slave. The slavery is a cunningly contrived debt slavery to give the appearance of civilization and the sanction of law. A debt of a few hundred dollars may tie a Black man and his family as securely in bondage to a great white planter as if he had purchased their bodies.” Lynching and Debt Slavery, William Pickins

 

     Elected Black officials were thrown out by their respective legislative bodies, “Black codes” (laws formulated to control and restrict Black citizens) were reinstated from slavery times and new discriminatory state and local laws were adopted throughout the South. Even more pernicious was the social permission given to Whites by Whites to renew their ill-treatment of Blacks in public. Strict segregation of Blacks and Whites was widely enforced legally and extra-legally.

 

“After shooting a disobedient slave in 1865, Amos Black warned his other bondsmen: ‘You have been fooled with the dammed Yankee lies till you thought you were free and you got so you could not obey your master. There is no law against killing niggers and I will kill every dammed one I have, if they do not obey me and work just as they did before the war.’” Slavery’s End in Tennessee, John Ciprich, page 120)

 

“That Africans and those of African descent were either not human or fully human was a cardinal tenant of proslavery thought and reveals the depths of depravity at the heart of White supremacist ideology.” Stony the Road, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., page 64

 

Black Stereotypes

     The newspapers of the South regularly portrayed Black Americans as ignorant, unintelligent, lustful, childish and potentially dangerous. American literature presented African American stereotypes in numerous novels similarly. There was regular “scientific” research published that argued that the evidence for African Americans being subhuman was obvious from the various findings.

     One of the most loved novels from the late 1800s was Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1881). Written by Joel Chandler Harris, the novel advanced the theme that most ex-slaves loved their “masters” and their life on the plantation.

 

“Harris was by no means alone in this portrayal of the devoted former slave, who fondly recalls life on the plantation and who, if given the chance, would return to it in a heartbeat, a powerful theme within the genre of plantation literature, still another justification for the deprivation of black rights through Jim Crow.” Stony the Road, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., page 97

 

Especially pernicious was the belief in the South that Black men lusted after White women. There was also the widespread belief that rapes by Blacks upon Whites were common and if not addressed by the White community would increase. A newspaper editorial in the Memphis Daily Commercial in 1892 stated: “The frequency of these lynchings calls attention to the frequency of the crimes which cause lynching. This ‘Southern barbarism’ which deserves the serious attention of all people North and South is the barbarism which preys upon weak and defenseless women. Nothing but the most prompt, speedy and extreme punishment can hold in check the horrible and bestial propensities of the Negro Race.” Stony the Road, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., page 140

 

Required Social Behaviors of Blacks

 

"They are not like men who have been always free," commented a white Republican sheriff, "not by a great deal. . . They do not know how to resist White men." Nor were Whites alone in falling back on such explanations. "The colored men, as a general thing, . ." declared Congressman Jeremiah Haralson, who had known bondage until 1865, "are afraid of the white men. He has been raised to be afraid of them." Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, Stephen Ash, 1863-1877 Page 436

 

“The Georgia slaveholder, Charles C. Jones, admitted that whites ‘live and die in the midst of negroes and know comparatively little of their real character’ because they were ‘one thing before whites, and another before their own color. Deception toward the former is characteristic of them, whether bond or free. . . . It is a habit—a long established custom, which descends from generation to generation.’ When Robert Smalls was asked whether ‘the masters know anything of their secret life,’ the ex-slave replied in 1863, ‘No, sir, one life they show their masters and another they don't show.’" The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, Herbert Gutman, Page 93

 

"Governor William C. Oates of Alabama, a former Confederate colonel, bluntly told the 1895 graduating class of the Tuskegee Institute, "I want to give you niggers a few words of plain talk and advice. You might just as well understand that this is a white man's country as far as the South is concerned, and we are going to make you keep your place." Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, Page 354

 

     All of the old social debasements of Black Americans (Speaking to Whites only when spoken to, stepping out of the way of White pedestrians, speaking to Whites with the titles of Mister, Missus, and Miss and being referred to in return as Uncle, Auntie or Sambo, not looking directly at Whites when spoken to, etc.) were strictly enforced and infringement could lead to serious non-legal repercussions. These social rules were followed throughout the South up to the latter part of the 20th Century. If the rules were broken, immediate or delayed punishment almost always followed.      The Emmett Till story in Mississippi in 1955 is an example of this practice existing well into the 20th Century. Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old Black American youth who was abducted and lynched after being accused of offending a White woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. Till's uncle, Mose Wright, identified one of Till’s attackers, J. W. Milam, during Milam's trial. This was in itself an act that "signified intimidation of Delta blacks was no longer as effective as in the past". Wright had "crossed a line that no one could remember a black man ever crossing in Mississippi". The persons charged with Till’s death were acquitted by an all-White jury. The jurors acknowledged that they knew the two White men charged with Till’s murder, Bryant and Milam, were guilty, but simply did not believe that life imprisonment or the death penalty were fit punishment for whites who had killed a black man. The quote from Milam on why he killed Till, “What else could I do? He thought he was as good as any White man” says all that can be said on the White supremist attitude in the South at the time. Till's murder contributed to congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957: it authorized the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in local law enforcement issues when individual civil rights were being compromised.​​​