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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 43. Institutions - 2. The Negro Family
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Chapter 43. Institutions 931
Negro family that it is practically necessary only to relate its conclusions to
our context and to refer the reader to it for details.
The uniqueness of the Negro family is a product of slavery. Most slave
owners either did not care about the marital state of their slaves or were
interested In seeing to it that they did not form strong marital bonds. The
slave owners who did not want some of their slaves to marry were: those
who had Negro mistresses, those who bred mulattoes or strong slaves, and
those who did not want to make it difficult when they sold slaves individu-
ally rather than in family units. The internal slave trade broke up many
slave families—even those belonging to masters who encouraged stable
marriages, when death or economic disaster occurred—and the threat of it
hung over all slave families. Certain cultural practices grew up in slavery
which retain their influences up to the present day in rural Southern areas:
marriages sometimes occur by simple public declaration or with a ceremony
conducted by a minister but without a marriage license. Coupled with this
was the popular belief that divorce could occur by public declaration or
simply by crossing state or county lines.
After slavery there emerged certain new obstacles in the way of marital
stability. Mobility was increased, work was not readily available, and there
began a migration to cities with an attendant increase in desertion, prostitu-
tion and temporary marriage. Yet coincident with these developments the
stability of the Negro family grew. Even before the Civil War there had
been certain masters who encouraged stable marriages among their slaves,
and the freed Negroes, especially in the North, began to develop their own
strong family units. The strong hold of religion on the Negro tended to
stabilize his family life. At the close of the Civil War, the slave states
legalized all existing common-law marriages “ and, with the disappearance
of the master’s interests and of forced sale, there was a great increase in
family stability. But the starting point was so low that Negroes never
caught up. Isolation, poverty and ignorance were again the obstacles to
acculturation.
There arc two outstanding types of exceptions to the general observation
that the average Negro family is more disorganized than the white family.
In rural areas of the South, especially in isolated areas, there is a large
class of Negro families which is so like the ideal type of the monogamous
patriarchal Christian family that Frazier calls them ^^Black Puritans.” The
impetus for this family form probably came from the religious slave owner.
Much more significant is the upper class Negro family in the towns and
cities. Upper class Negroes probably have fewer extra-marital relations and
• Some states required that the couple be remarried j others required only that they declare
their marriage before a public officer and get a certificate j but the majority of Southern states
legalized all Negro common-law marriages without any action on the part of the coii})le.
A few states left it to the courts to recognize legality as cases arose. (Gilbert T. Stephenson,
Race Distinctions in Afnerican Law [1910], pp. 67-68.)
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