"The Ante-Bellum Black Community in Michiana," October 1994

              The Ante-bellum Black Community in Michiana
St. Joseph County (Indiana) & Cass County (Michigan)
In the decades preceding the Civil War, free Blacks and fugitive
slaves (not unlike white settlers) brought their culture,
skills, and labor power to Michiana to seek greater
opportunities and freedoms.  Three groups of Blacks migrated
to Michiana in the ante-bellum era.  These included:
(1) Blacks who were free prior to migration
(2) recently emancipated Blacks who were legally forced after
their emancipation (manumission) to leave the slave state in
which they resided
(3) fugitive slaves (runaways)
Legal Restraints & Black Migration to Michiana
Black settlers confronted the hostility of a new frontier and
the legal and social racial restraints of the nation and the
state.  Although similar to Southern slave and free Black codes,
legal restraints in Indiana were not as extensive or as strongly
enforced.  Prior to 1830 the rights of suffrage, court
testimony, interracial marriage, and state militia service
were legally taken from Blacks in Indiana.  From 1850 to 1869
Black children were not legally permitted to attend public
schools regardless of local sentiments.  In 1851 the Indiana
Constitutional Convention delegates voted 93 to 40 to approve
Article 8 that stated "No negro or mulatto shall come into
or settle in the State..." (Blacks constituted only 1 % of
Indiana's population from 1830 to 1860.)  The Elkhart County
electorate, however, voted against Article 8 (one of four
northern counties).  The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 increased
the precarious situation of Blacks in Michiana and the nation.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 allowed the re-enslavement of
any Black person in the North or South who did not possess
a certificate of freedom.  The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and
Article 8 decreased Indiana's Black population growth to only
1% from 1850 to 1860.  Michiana's Black population growth rate
was drastically different; St. Joseph Co.'s Black population
increased 133% and Cass Co. saw a 250% growth rate in the decade
before the Civil War.  The national and state legal hostilities
of the 1850s influenced:
(1) why Blacks chose to relocate to Michiana (a community of
distance from slave states)
(2) where Blacks would reside within Michiana
Black & Quaker Communities in Michiana
Cass Co.'s Black population primarily settled in townships
with large Quaker populations (Calvin and Porter Townships).
Quakers (Friends) nationwide and in Michiana were active in
or supported anti-slavery movements and the Underground
Railroad.  By 1860 Mariah Coleman's family resided near Solomon
Palmer, a worker on the Underground Railroad in St. Joseph
County. In the late 1840s, the foundation of a small rural
Black settlement (the Huggart settlement) was laid in Union