US passport 1868 African American ! | ||
| Paper28 of 2867 |  |  |
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Posted 2 years ago
TomTopol
(36 items)
Also, this US passport from 4 November 1868 was issued to a 24 yo black man. Such early passports for African Americans are unusual and very rare to find.
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Maybe one ex-slaves going the Liberia ?
From Cuba to Liberia, possible...another 4600 miles...
TomTopol, Fascinating. :-)
Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but two things stand out to me:
1. The passport holder's listed eye color of hazel is a somewhat ambiguous one, but it's generally considered a light eye color.
2. His very neat signature.
He might well have been a person of color born into slavery, but he had some education. Was that because one of his parents was white?
Mi kos, the revisionists propaganda about slaves not being educated is only partially true. Intelligent ones were often taught reading, math etc. as they were helping a farm to be profitable and, as usual, rules were bent to fit the needs. Eyes: blacks who mixed with Caribe Indians often have green, aqua or hazel eyes, as just an example. Maybe he had "designer genes". LOL
We can only speculate, but an exciting document for sure.
blunderbuss2, There is plenty of revisionist propaganda about slaves circulating out there, and it doesn't all have the same viewpoint.
I don't doubt that some slaves were educated by their owners. It probably varied not only by owner and location, but by what kind of business they were operating.
'White' people can also end up with some of the less common eye colors such as green and hazel as a result of a merging of previously isolated gene pools.
I remember reading Mary McCarthy's "The Group" many years ago, and scoffing at her observation about green eyes bordered with brown being a sign of Amerindian ancestry until I worked with somebody who had those eyes.
He looked like a stereotypical countrified white man with a pale complexion and medium brown hair who liked to wear snap-button western shirts, but his surname was the English translation of his Amerindian one.
TomTopol, Yup, we can only speculate. };-)