FBA

Lineage, not a label. The paper changed. We didn't.

The paper changed

Same families, same ground, a new word on the census every few decades. Every label below is on the government's own forms.

1820Free colored personsRecordU.S. Census Bureau, Measuring Race and Ethnicity 1790–2010

1850MulattoRecordCensus Bureau: used for free and held inhabitants both

1890Quadroon · OctoroonRecordCensus Bureau: "blood" fractions added

1930NegroRecordEnumerator instructions: "mixed white and Negro blood" returned as Negro (Pew Research)

1970Negro or BlackRecordCensus Bureau: the Negro box now included "Black"

2000Black or African AmericanRecordCensus Bureau

2020Black, African Am., or NegroRecordPew Research: "Negro" dropped after 2020

NowFoundationalWe name ourselves.

Four numbers, four receipts. Each one ties to a record you can look up yourself.

Born here. Built here. First on the roll.

13th Amendment, 1865: freedom, "except as a punishment for crime."

Field Order No. 15, January 1865. Promised, then revoked by President Andrew Johnson that fall.

The first census to write our people's names. Before it, the held were counted as numbers.

FBA is a line you can prove on paper. Start with the people you know and walk it back.

Names, towns, counties, churches. Write down what the family always said, even when the paper says something else.

The first census that names every one of our people.

Freedmen's Bureau files, 1865–1872: labor contracts, marriages, schools, ration lists.

The Dawes rolls put Five Tribes families on "freedmen" cards, not "by blood." See which card your people were put on.

The native towns and the Black towns on the same ground, with the receipt behind each one.

Names before labels. Your people had names the paper didn't write.

Every claim here ties to a record in the WW9 Library.

Our people built it and are buried in it. Stand on it.

All praises to the Most High.