WILLIAMSBURG — The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF) has recently acquired a “FREE” badge, now on view in the Lowcountry section of the “A Rich and Varied Culture” exhibition in the Nancy N. and Colin G. Campbell Gallery of the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
According to the foundation, the origin of the badge lies in the weeks after the Revolutionary War ended by the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, when the newly incorporated city of Charleston, South Carolina, began to pass laws.
The population of the city was overwhelmingly African American with more than 8,000 people in the community, and the vast majority of them were enslaved; only about 600 were living there as free citizens, CWF explains.
Fearful of insurrection, the city’s administration continued to implement policies designed to constrain the lives of all of its African American residents. An ordinance from Nov. 22, 1783, regulated the employment or “hiring out” of skilled and unskilled enslaved workers in which an individual went to work for an entity other than their enslaver, who was paid a fee for the service provided.
An annual fee of five to forty shillings was to be paid to the city by the enslaver for the right of an enslaved person to be hired out, and a badge or ticket was required to be worn by the laborer. CWF notes while no examples of “slave” badges dating to 1783 are known to exist today, 10 “free” badges from later in the 1780s have been located and are either in private or museum collections.
“It’s an important piece — and an emotional one,” said J. Grahame Long, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s executive director of collections and deputy chief curator. “Obviously, it’s a terrific addition to Colonial Williamsburg’s permanent collection, but it goes much further than that. It’s a critical component in telling America’s whole story.”
The Charleston “hiring out” law did not pertain to enslaved workers only.
It went further to affect the free African American population, as well, stating, “every free negro, mulatto or [mestizo] living or residing within this City, shall be obliged to register him, her or themselves, in the office of the City Clerk, with the number of their respective families and places of residence … every free negro, mulatto, or mestizo, above the age of fifteen years, shall be obliged to obtain a badge from the Corporation of the City, for which badge every such person shall pay into the City Treasury the sum of Five Shillings, and shall wear it suspended by a string or ribband, and exposed to view on his breast.”
“Through these dehumanizing requirements, the city of Charleston levied a fee on the right of free people of color to live and work there, which was a stinging irony when considering the root causes of the American Revolution,” the foundation said.
Enslaved individuals caught wearing a “FREE” badge were subject to whipping, by up to 39 lashes, followed by an hour in the stocks.
“I can’t help but see the parallels between these 18th-century ‘free’ badges and the yellow stars worn by Jews during the Holocaust,” said Erik Goldstein, Colonial Williamsburg’s senior curator of mechanical arts, metals, and numismatics. “Both survive as reminders of horrific ideologies, and how humanity must do better going forward.”
The 10 known “FREE” badges, with one exception, all are made of copper.
Each badge carries a unique sequential designator as they were intended to be instruments of tracking, control and a revenue source, according to CWF.
Research conducted by Goldstein at Colonial Williamsburg reveals new insights into how these badges were made, the foundation said.
“The fact that two of the ‘FREE’ badges were made from re-used copper printing plates is an exciting discovery, since few printing plates from 18th-century American currency issues survive, in any form. But it also makes sense, using governmentally owned material for an official purpose,” said Goldstein.
A law passed on June 16, 1789, eliminated both of Charleston’s badge programs for African Americans. When the city reimplemented a significantly enlarged system of regulation in 1800, it required the purchase and wearing of badges for enslaved people only.
Between then and the end of the Civil War in 1865, more than 187,000 “slave badges” were made, sold and worn by Charleston’s “hired out” enslaved workers, according to the foundation.
Though “FREE” badges were never again mandated by the city, the poor condition of some of the surviving examples suggests they may have been worn well past their obsolescence. It is speculated that their owners sought to display their status as dignified, free individuals in an open and proud manner for all to see, CWF said.
Additional information about the Art Museums and Colonial Williamsburg as well as tickets are available online at colonialwilliamsburg.org and by following Colonial Williamsburg on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
