African Americans in Tennessee

Tennessee was "born" when North Carolina ceded the area to the federal government in 1790. The "Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio", as it was originally known, became home to 35,691 people, 3,417 of whom were African descended slaves. By 1800, ten thousand new slaves had entered Tennessee from North Carolina and Virginia.

The early Tennessee Slave Code guaranteed slaves shelter, food, clothing & medical attention. It also protected them when they ceased to be useful, gave them the right to contract for their freedom, and in 1835, granted them the right to trial by jury.

West Tennessee counted almost no slaves in 1820 and over 56,000 by 1840.

Two of the largest slave traders operating in Tennessee were Isaac Franklin and John Armfield.

After 1831, free blacks were prohibited from entering Tennessee. Legislation was also enacted providing that no slave should be emancipated unless he should leave the state immediately.

Free African-Americans were allowed to attend private schools in Memphis and Nashville, receive religious instruction, to sue and be sued, to make contracts and inherit property, and enjoy legal marriage.

There were 361 free African Americans in Tennessee in 1801; 2,727 in 1820; 4,555 in1830. and 7,300 by the beginning of the Civil War.

By 1834, the right to vote for free African -Americans had been abolished.

The slave trade was abolished in Tennessee in 1826. In 1855, the Tennessee general assembly repealed the ban.

Slaves on the early frontier rarely lived in large groups, for most slaveholders owned only one or two slaves, or perhaps a slave family. Slaves in the early years were rarely sold except in settling estates.

More than 100 slaves are buried in their master's plots in the Riverside Cemetery (Bolivar St.and Bates Avenue) in Jackson, Tennessee.

Joe Clouston was one of five African Americans who owned more than a hundred slaves.

By 1856, 86 slaveowners in West Tennessee owned one hundred or more slaves.

Slaves in Tennessee were officially freed February 25, 1865. In Hickman, Dyer, Weakley and Haywood counties, owners refused to free their slaves until the end of the summer (when the crops were in). Tennessee was the only state to free slaves by popular vote.

Nashville and smaller towns kept slaves for municipal repair and scavenger work. Large numbers of company owned slaves furnished the unskilled labor for steamboats and railroads.

The first colored graduates from the Jackson, Tennessee graded schools graduated in 1886 (there were 2 people).

By October of 1863, almost 4,000 Tennessee blacks had enlisted in the Civil War.

In May of 1866, Tennessee extended all the rights of citizenship to "persons of color" except marrying whites, serving on juries and voting.

In 1867, Blacks in Tennessee won the right to vote.